Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurosci.

Sec. Translational Neuroscience

This article is part of the Research TopicResearch on the Correlative Mechanisms and Clinical Exploration of Headache and Cerebrovascular DiseasesView all 18 articles

Integration of Imaging and Clinical Biomarkers for Cerebral Infarction Diagnosis via NeuroFusionNet

Provisionally accepted
Jun  ZhaoJun Zhao*Yongkun  GuiYongkun GuiLingling  ZhangLingling ZhangFeixiang  LiFeixiang LiDewei  ZhuDewei ZhuHaoliang  WangHaoliang WangYuhua  HeYuhua HePing  ZhangPing Zhang*
  • The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

ABSTRACT Background: Cerebral infarction remains a leading cause of mortality and long-term disability worldwide, demanding rapid and accurate diagnostic strategies. However, current assessments primarily rely on imaging interpretation, often neglecting valuable clinical and laboratory information that could enhance diagnostic precision. Methods: We developed NeuroFusionNet, a multi-modal deep learning framework that integrates imaging features with clinical biomarkers for binary classification of cerebral infarction and healthy controls. The model combines a ResNet-based visual encoder with a multilayer perceptron branch for clinical indicators, achieving end-to-end feature fusion and joint optimization. Results: NeuroFusionNet achieved superior diagnostic performance with an accuracy of 0.9655, precision of 0.9584, recall of 0.9584, and F1-score of 0.9584, significantly outperforming baseline models including ResNet, MobileNet, and GhostNet. The integration of imaging and clinical biomarkers effectively enhanced model sensitivity and robustness, demonstrating strong potential for real-world clinical application. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the clinical value of integrating imaging and laboratory data for precision diagnosis of cerebral infarction. NeuroFusionNet provides a scalable and interpretable framework that may support early detection and personalized management of cerebrovascular diseases in routine clinical practice.

Keywords: Cerebral Infarction, clinical biomarkers, Medical Image Analysis, Multimodal deep learning, Neural network fusion

Received: 03 Dec 2025; Accepted: 02 Jan 2026.

Copyright: © 2026 Zhao, Gui, Zhang, Li, Zhu, Wang, He and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Jun Zhao
Ping Zhang

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.