MTGWNN: A Multi‐Template Graph Wavelet Neural Network Identification Model for Autism Spectrum Disorder

ABSTRACT Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely applied in studying various brain disorders. However, current studies typically model regions of interest (ROIs) in brains with a single template. This approach generally examines only the connectivity between ROIs to identify autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ignoring the structural features of the brain. This study proposes a multi‐template graph wavelet neural network (GWNN) identification model for ASD called MTGWNN. First, the brain is segmented with multiple templates and the BOLD time series are extracted from fMRI data to construct brain networks. Next, a graph attention network (GAT) is applied to automatically learn interactions between nodes, capturing local information in the node features. These features are then further processed by a convolutional neural network (CNN) to learn global connectivity representations and achieve feature dimensionality reduction. Finally, the features and phenotypic data from each subject are integrated by GWNN to identify ASD at the optimal scale. Experimental results indicate that MTGWNN outperforms the comparative models. Testing on the public dataset ABIDE‐I achieved an accuracy (ACC) of 87.25% and an area under the curve (AUC) of 92.49%. MTGWNN effectively integrates brain network features from multiple templates, providing a more comprehensive characterization of brain abnormalities in patients with ASD. It incorporates population information from phenotypic data, which helps to compensate for the limited sample size of individual patients and improves the robustness and generalization of ASD identification.