Joint Semi-Symmetric Tensor PCA for Integrating Multi-modal Populations of Networks

Abstract

Multi-modal populations of networks arise in many scenarios including in large-scale multi-modal neuroimaging studies that capture both functional and structural neuroimaging data for thousands of subjects. A major research question in such studies is how functional and structural brain connectivity are related and how they vary across the population. we develop a novel PCA-type framework for integrating multi-modal undirected networks measured on many subjects. Specifically, we arrange these networks as semi-symmetric tensors, where each tensor slice is a symmetric matrix representing a network from an individual subject. We then propose a novel Joint, Integrative Semi-Symmetric Tensor PCA (JisstPCA) model, associated with an efficient iterative algorithm, for jointly finding low-rank representations of two or more networks across the same population of subjects. We establish one-step statistical convergence of our separate low-rank network factors as well as the shared population factors to the true factors, with finite sample statistical error bounds. Through simulation studies and a real data example for integrating multi-subject functional and structural brain connectivity, we illustrate the advantages of our method for finding joint low-rank structures in multi-modal populations of networks.