The Role of Machine Learning in Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Parkinson disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease characterized by both motor and nonmotor symptoms. Cognitive impairment often occurs early in the disease and can persist throughout its progression, severely impacting patients' quality of life. The utilization of machine learning (ML) has recently shown promise in identifying cognitive impairment in patients with PD.

This study aims to summarize different ML models applied to cognitive impairment in patients with PD and to identify determinants for improving diagnosis and predictive power for early detection of cognitive impairment.

PubMed, Cochrane, Embase, and Web of Science were searched for relevant articles on March 2, 2024. The risk of bias was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2). Bivariate meta-analysis was used to estimate pooled sensitivity and specificity results, presented as odds ratio (OR) and 95% CI. A summary receiver operator characteristic (SROC) curve was used.

A total of 38 articles met the criteria, involving 8564 patients with PD and 1134 healthy controls. Overall, 120 models reported sensitivity and specificity, with mean values of 71.07% (SD 13.72%) and 77.01% (SD 14.31%), respectively. Predictors commonly used in ML models included clinical features, neuroimaging features, and other variables. No significant heterogeneity was observed in the bivariate meta-analysis, which included 12 studies. Using sensitivity as the metric, the combined sensitivity and specificity were 0.76 (95% CI 0.67-0.83) and 0.83 (95% CI 0.76-0.88), respectively. When specificity was used, the combined values were 0.77 (95% CI 0.65-0.86) and 0.76 (95% CI 0.63-0.85), respectively. The area under the curves of the SROC were 0.87 (95% CI 0.83-0.89) and 0.83 (95% CI 0.80-0.86) respectively.

Our findings provide a comprehensive summary of various ML models and demonstrate the effectiveness of ML as a tool for diagnosing and predicting cognitive impairment in patients with PD.

PROSPERO CRD42023480196; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD42023480196.