At present there are no objective biological markers that can be used to reliably identify depressive individuals with and without suicidal ideation (SI). DTI data were obtained from 20 depressive patients with SI and 20 depressive patients without SI, scanned using a 3T MRI system. Fractional anisotropy (FA) values of white matter between patients were examined using multivariate support vector machine (SVM). SVM applied to FA images correctly discriminated two groups of patients with a sensitivity of 75% and a specificity of 85% resulting in a statistically significant accuracy of 80% (p≤0.001). The discriminating regions contain the bilateral occipital lobes and parietal lobes, right temporal lobe and splenium of corpus callosum. These results reveal patterns of neuroanatomical alterations that could be used to inform the identification of depressive patients with and without SI at the individual level.
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