Machine Learning-Powered fNIRS Detection of Idiopathic Central Precocious Puberty via Prefrontal Cortex Activation

Objective and Impact Statement: This study examines prefrontal cortex (PFC) hemodynamic responses in children with idiopathic central precocious puberty (ICPP) versus normals and constructs a noninvasive diagnostic model using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) augmented by machine learning. Introduction: Current ICPP diagnosis relies on invasive and time-consuming gonadotropin-releasing hormone stimulation tests. While fNIRS offers a noninvasive alternative, the neural mechanisms underlying ICPP remain unclear, and reliable automated diagnostic tools distinguishing patients from healthy peers are lacking. Methods: fNIRS data were acquired from 167 participants (82 ICPP and 85 normal) during a mental arithmetic (MA) task. General linear models and statistical tests were employed to analyze group and gender-specific activation patterns. Multidimensional features were extracted from hemodynamic signals, and a conditional denoising diffusion probabilistic model (C-DDPM) was introduced for data augmentation. Results: Analysis revealed gender-specific disparities, with the normal group exhibiting more extensive PFC activation than the ICPP group. In classification, a decision tree model using features from key negatively correlated channels achieved 86.57% accuracy. Notably, integrating C-DDPM-generated synthetic data further improved classifier performance metrics. Conclusion: The study elucidates the mechanisms of PFC activation in both normative and ICPP-affected cohorts during MA tasks and validates the effectiveness of machine learning in distinguishing between normal and ICPP children. This study provides a scientific basis for the development of automated, noninvasive rapid diagnostic tools for ICPP.