Episode 25: Estimating brain age from MRI to flag accelerated aging and cognitive decline

This episode discusses a study from Johns Hopkins University in the United States that introduces a brain age predictor from MRI, designed to stay accurate across different scanners and cohorts. The model estimates a person's age from a brain scan to within about four years, and holds that accuracy on an independent external dataset. The gap between predicted and actual age rose steadily from healthy adults to mild cognitive impairment to dementia, and tracked cognitive test scores, supporting its use as a marker of accelerated brain aging. OpenMAP-BrainAge: Generalizable and Interpretable Brain Age Predictor from MRI. Kan et al. Radiology Advances, umag025