Machine Learning-Based Model for Prediction of Hemorrhage Transformation in Acute Ischemic Stroke After Alteplase

Hemorrhage transformation (HT) is the most dreaded complication of intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) in acute ischemic stroke (AIS). The prediction of HT after IVT is important in the treatment decision-making for AIS. We designed and compared different machine learning methods, capable of predicting HT in AIS after IVT. A total of 345 AIS patients who received intravenous alteplase between January 2016 and June 2021 were enrolled in this retrospective study. The demographic characteristics, clinical condition, biochemical data, and neuroimaging variables were included for analysis. HT was confirmed by head computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) within 48 h after IVT. Based on the neuroimaging results, all of the patients were divided into the non-HT group and the HT group. Then, the variables were applied in logistic regression (LR) and random forest (RF) algorithms to establish HT prediction models. To evaluate the accuracy of the machine learning models, the models were compared to several of the common scales used in clinics, including the multicenter stroke survey (MSS) score, safe implementation of treatments in stroke (SITS) score, and SEDAN score. The performance of these prediction models was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC). Forty-five patients had HT (13.0%) within 48 h after IVT. The ROC curve results showed that the AUCs of HT that were predicted by the RF model, LR model, MSS, SITS, and SEDAN scales after IVT were 0.795 (95% CI, 0.647-0.944), 0.703 (95% CI, 0.515-0.892), 0.657 (95% CI, 0.574-0.741), 0.660 (95% CI, 0.580-0.740) and 0.655 (95% CI, 0.571-0.739), respectively. The RF model performed better than the other models and scales. The top four most influential factors in the RF importance matrix plot were triglyceride, Lpa, the baseline NIHSS, and hemoglobin. The SHapley Additive exPlanation values made the RF prediction model clinically interpretable. In this study, an RF machine learning method was successfully established to predict HT in AIS patients after intravenous alteplase, which the sensitivity was 66.7%, and the specificity was 80.7%.