Evaluation of the models generated from clinical features and deep learning-based segmentations: Can thoracic CT on admission help us to predict hospitalized COVID-19 patients who will require intensive care?


Gülbay M., Baştuğ A., Özkan E., Öztürk B. Y., Mendi B. A. R., Bodur H.

BMC Medical Imaging, vol.22, no.1, 2022 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 22 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2022
  • Doi Number: 10.1186/s12880-022-00833-2
  • Journal Name: BMC Medical Imaging
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Biotechnology Research Abstracts, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Computed tomography, COVID-19, Deep learning, Logistic regression models, Machine learning, Radiomics
  • Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University Affiliated: No

Abstract

Background: The aim of the study was to predict the probability of intensive care unit (ICU) care for inpatient COVID-19 cases using clinical and artificial intelligence segmentation-based volumetric and CT-radiomics parameters on admission. Methods: Twenty-eight clinical/laboratory features, 21 volumetric parameters, and 74 radiomics parameters obtained by deep learning (DL)-based segmentations from CT examinations of 191 severe COVID-19 inpatients admitted between March 2020 and March 2021 were collected. Patients were divided into Group 1 (117 patients discharged from the inpatient service) and Group 2 (74 patients transferred to the ICU), and the differences between the groups were evaluated with the T-test and Mann–Whitney test. The sensitivities and specificities of significantly different parameters were evaluated by ROC analysis. Subsequently, 152 (79.5%) patients were assigned to the training/cross-validation set, and 39 (20.5%) patients were assigned to the test set. Clinical, radiological, and combined logit-fit models were generated by using the Bayesian information criterion from the training set and optimized via tenfold cross-validation. To simultaneously use all of the clinical, volumetric, and radiomics parameters, a random forest model was produced, and this model was trained by using a balanced training set created by adding synthetic data to the existing training/cross-validation set. The results of the models in predicting ICU patients were evaluated with the test set. Results: No parameter individually created a reliable classifier. When the test set was evaluated with the final models, the AUC values were 0.736, 0.708, and 0.794, the specificity values were 79.17%, 79.17%, and 87.50%, the sensitivity values were 66.67%, 60%, and 73.33%, and the F1 values were 0.67, 0.62, and 0.76 for the clinical, radiological, and combined logit-fit models, respectively. The random forest model that was trained with the balanced training/cross-validation set was the most successful model, achieving an AUC of 0.837, specificity of 87.50%, sensitivity of 80%, and F1 value of 0.80 in the test set. Conclusion: By using a machine learning algorithm that was composed of clinical and DL-segmentation-based radiological parameters and that was trained with a balanced data set, COVID-19 patients who may require intensive care could be successfully predicted.