Prediction of Hemorrhagic Transformation Severity in Acute Stroke From Source Perfusion MRI

Hemorrhagic transformation (HT) is the most severe complication of reperfusion therapy in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients. Management of AIS patients could benefit from accurate prediction of upcoming HT. While prediction of HT occurrence has recently provided encouraging results, the prediction of the severity and territory of the HT could bring valuable insights that are beyond current methods.

This study tackles these issues and aims to predict the spatial occurrence of HT in AIS from perfusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (PWI) combined with diffusion weighted imaging. In all, 165 patients were included in this study and analyzed retrospectively from a cohort of AIS patients treated with reperfusion therapy in a single stroke center.

Machine learning models are compared within our framework; support vector machines, linear regression, decision trees, neural networks, and kernel spectral regression were applied to the dataset. Kernel spectral regression performed best with an accuracy of $\text{83.7} \pm \text{2.6}\%$.

The key contribution of our framework formalize HT prediction as a machine learning problem. Specifically, the model learns to extract imaging markers of HT directly from source PWI images rather than from pre-established metrics.

Predictions visualized in terms of spatial likelihood of HT in various territories of the brain were evaluated against follow-up gradient recalled echo and provide novel insights for neurointerventionalists prior to endovascular therapy.