Machine learning models for predicting the risk factor of carotid plaque in cardiovascular disease

Chengling Bin; Qin Li; Jing Tang; Chaorong Dai; Ting Jiang; Xiufang Xie; Min Qiu; Lumiao Chen; Shaorong Yang

doi:10.3389/fcvm.2023.1178782

Machine learning models for predicting the risk factor of carotid plaque in cardiovascular disease

Front Cardiovasc Med. 2023 Sep 22:10:1178782. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2023.1178782. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Chengling Bin¹, Qin Li¹, Jing Tang¹, Chaorong Dai¹, Ting Jiang¹, Xiufang Xie², Min Qiu³, Lumiao Chen⁴, Shaorong Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Health Management Section, The First People's Hospital of Neijiang, Neijiang, China.
² Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The First People's Hospital of Neijiang, Neijiang, China.
³ Special Inspection Department, The First People's Hospital of Neijiang, Neijiang, China.
⁴ Laboratory Department, The First People's Hospital of Neijiang, Neijiang, China.

Abstract

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a group of diseases involving the heart or blood vessels and represents a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Carotid plaque is an important risk factor for CVD that can reflect the severity of atherosclerosis. Accordingly, developing a prediction model for carotid plaque formation is essential to assist in the early prevention and management of CVD.

Methods: In this study, eight machine learning algorithms were established, and their performance in predicting carotid plaque risk was compared. Physical examination data were collected from 4,659 patients and used for model training and validation. The eight predictive models based on machine learning algorithms were optimized using the above dataset and 10-fold cross-validation. The Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) tool was used to compute and visualize feature importance. Then, the performance of the models was evaluated according to the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), feature importance, accuracy and specificity.

Results: The experimental results indicated that the XGBoost algorithm outperformed the other machine learning algorithms, with an AUC, accuracy and specificity of 0.808, 0.749 and 0.762, respectively. Moreover, age, smoke, alcohol drink and BMI were the top four predictors of carotid plaque formation. It is feasible to predict carotid plaque risk using machine learning algorithms.

Conclusions: This study indicates that our models can be applied to routine chronic disease management procedures to enable more preemptive, broad-based screening for carotid plaque and improve the prognosis of CVD patients.

Keywords: cardiovascular disease; carotid plaque; machine learning; prediction model; shap.