Advanced Brain Age Prediction Using Multi-Head Self-Attention: A Comparative Analysis of Western and Middle Eastern MRI Datasets

Brain age estimation is a critical biomarker for early detection of neurodegenerative diseases, but existing models are primarily trained on Western datasets, limiting their applicability to diverse populations. Recent studies suggest that brain aging patterns vary across ethnic groups, highlighting the need for more inclusive and adaptable AI-driven neuroimaging models. We trained our model on 4,635 healthy individuals (40--80 years) from ADNI, OASIS-3, Cam-CAN, and IXI, using 80% of data (n=3700) for training and 20% (n=935) for testing. The model was further tested on a Middle Eastern dataset (107 subjects, Tehran, Iran). It integrates multi-head self-attention along with residual connections to enhance long-range spatial feature learning, improving upon previous CNN models. Performance was evaluated using mean absolute error (MAE). The model achieved state-of-the-art accuracy (MAE = 1.99 years) on the Western test set, while being much lighter than previous models (approximately 3 million parameters); however, it performed significantly worse on the ME dataset (best MAE = 4.35 years, final = 5.83 years). Bias correction did not improve performance, indicating population-specific brain aging differences. These findings emphasize the need for diverse training datasets and cross-population adaptation techniques.