Research and application progress of radiomics in neurodegenerative diseases

Neurodegenerative diseases refer to degenerative diseases of the nervous system caused by neuronal degeneration and apoptosis. Usually, the onset of the disease is insidious, and the progression is slow, which can last for several years to decades. Clinical symptoms only appear in the later stages of pathological changes when the degree of nerve cell loss reaches or exceeds a certain threshold. Traditional electrophysiological and medical imaging techniques lack valuable indicators and markers. Therefore, early diagnosis and differentiation are very difficult. Radiomics is a new medical imaging technology merged in recent years, which can extract a large number of invisible features from raw image data with high throughput, and quantitatively analyze the pathological and physiological changes. It demonstrates important potential value in the diagnosis, grading, and prognosis evaluation of NDs. This review provides an overview of the research progress of radiomics in neurodegenerative diseases, emphasizing the process principles of radiomics and its application in the diagnosis, classification, and prediction of these diseases. This helps to deepen the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and promote early diagnosis and treatment in clinical practice.