Robust Community Detection for Noisy Networks with Covariates: Application to Functional Brain Networks

Abstract

Community detection is fundamental to understanding the modular organization in functional brain networks, yet noise in neuroimaging-derived networks and auxiliary node-level covariates pose critical challenges. Existing methods typically either assume networks are noise-free or ignore covariate information. We propose a Bayesian framework for recovering a shared latent community structure from multiple noisy network realizations and auxiliary covariates. The model combines a degree-corrected stochastic block model for the latent network, a block-structured noise model linking noisy observations to latent edges, and a covariate cluster model for node-level attributes. This specification allows anatomical or functional attributes of regions of interest to contribute information when network signals are weak or sparse. We develop an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for posterior sampling and select the number of communities using the widely applicable information criterion, avoiding prior specification of this quantity. Simulation studies demonstrate improved community recovery relative to existing methods across varying noise levels, covariate signal strengths, and numbers of noisy networks, with larger gains when network noise is moderate to high or only a small number of noisy networks is available. Applications to functional brain networks from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative and the Human Connectome Project identify biologically interpretable structures and capture disease-related reorganization and individual-level variation.