Potential of vibrational spectroscopy coupled with machine learning as a non-invasive diagnostic method for COVID-19

Efforts to alleviate the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis showed that rapid, sensitive, and large-scale screening is critical for controlling the current infection and that of ongoing pandemics.

Here, we explored the potential of vibrational spectroscopy coupled with machine learning to screen COVID-19 patients in its initial stage. Herein presented is a hybrid classification model called grey wolf optimized support vector machine (GWO-SVM). The proposed model was tested and comprehensively compared with other machine learning models via vibrational spectroscopic fingerprinting including saliva FTIR spectra dataset and serum Raman scattering spectra dataset.

For the unknown vibrational spectra, the presented GWO-SVM model provided an accuracy, specificity and F1_score value of 0.9825, 0.9714 and 0.9778 for saliva FTIR spectra dataset, respectively, while an overall accuracy, specificity and F1_score value of 0.9085, 0.9552 and 0.9036 for serum Raman scattering spectra dataset, respectively, which showed superiority than those of state-of-the-art models, thereby suggesting the suitability of the GWO-SVM model to be adopted in a clinical setting for initial screening of COVID-19 patients.

Prospectively, the presented vibrational spectroscopy based GWO-SVM model can facilitate in screening of COVID-19 patients and alleviate the medical service burden. Therefore, herein proof-of-concept results showed the chance of vibrational spectroscopy coupled with GWO-SVM model to help COVID-19 diagnosis and have the potential be further used for early screening of other infectious diseases.