Evolvable Graph Diffusion Optimal Transport with Pattern-Specific Alignment for Brain Connectome Modeling

Abstract

Network analysis of human brain connectivity indicates that individual differences in cognitive abilities arise from neurobiological mechanisms inherent in structural and functional brain networks. Existing studies routinely treat structural connectivity (SC) as optimal or fixed topological scaffolds for functional connectivity (FC), often overlooking higher-order dependencies between brain regions and limiting the modeling of complex cognitive processes. Besides, the distinct spatial organizations of SC and FC complicate direct integration, as naive alignment may distort intrinsic nonlinear patterns of brain connectivity. In this study, we propose a novel framework called Evolvable Graph Diffusion Optimal Transport with Pattern-Specific Alignment (EDT-PA), designed to identify disease-specific connectome patterns and classify brain disorders. To accurately model high-order structural dependencies, EDT-PA incorporates a spectrum of evolvable modeling blocks to dynamically capture high-order dependencies across brain regions. Additionally, a Pattern-Specific Alignment mechanism employs optimal transport to align structural and functional representations in a geometry-aware manner. By incorporating a Kolmogorov-Arnold network for flexible node aggregation, EDT-PA is capable of modeling complex nonlinear interactions among brain regions for downstream classification. Extensive evaluations on the REST-meta-MDD and ADNI datasets demonstrate that EDT-PA outperforms state-of-the-art methods, offering a more effective framework for revealing structure-function misalignments and disorder-specific subnetworks in brain disorders. The project of this work is released via this link.