Longitudinal survival analysis and two-group comparison for predicting the progression of mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease.

•Two approaches for developing predictive models of MCI-to-AD progression were compared.•These models combined MRI-based markers with standard cognitive measures using a longitudinal study.•The approaches predict MCI to AD progression with an accuracy of 78% at baseline.•Adding new patient visits improves the performances of the models (in the 36-month visit accuracy is 85%).•The source code and data are available online.