Predicting the subclinical carotid atherosclerosis in overweight and obese patients using a machine learning model

Aim. To develop a model for predicting the subclinical carotid atherosclerosis (SCA) in order to refine cardiovascular risk (CVR) using machine learning methods in overweight and obese patients without hypertension, diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Material and methods. Anonymized database (DB) Webiomed (2.9 million patients) was used. There were following inclusion criteria: age ≥18 years, body mass index ≥25 kg/m2, availability of data on ultrasound of extracranial arteries. Patients with hypertension, diabetes and/or CVD were excluded from the analysis. Data on 5750 patients were selected, of which atherosclerotic plaques were detected in 385 people. The final data set contained information on 447 patients, 197 (44,1%) of which had SCA. Quantitative and categorical traits for model training were taken with ≥40% occupancy in the database. The number of final traits for machine learning was 28. When creating the model, 3 Random Forest algorithms, AdaBoostClassifier, KNeighborsClassifier and the Scikit-learn library were used. To improve the model performance, the fill missing function was used. The target parameters of the model were given a predictive ability (accuracy) of at least 75%, while the area under the ROC curve was at least 0,75.

Results. The resulting dataset was divided into training and test parts in a ratio of 80:20. Depending on the applied algorithms, the learned model was characterized by a predictive ability of 75-97%, sensitivity of 77-92%, specificity of 80-98%, and area under the ROC-curve of 0,88-0,97. Taking into account the accuracy metrics, the best results were obtained for the model learned by the Random Forest algorithm (95%, 92%, 98% and 0,95, respectively)

Conclusion. The developed model can help a physician make a decision to refer an overweight and obese patient without cardiovascular diseases for ultrasound of extracranial arteries, which contributes to a more accurate CVR stratification. The introduction of such risk stratification algorithms into practice will increase the accuracy and quality of CVR prediction and optimize the system of preventive
measures.