Interpretable machine learning for early neurological deterioration prediction in atrial fibrillation-related stroke

We aimed to develop a novel prediction model for early neurological deterioration (END) based on an interpretable machine learning (ML) algorithm for atrial fibrillation (AF)-related stroke and to evaluate the prediction accuracy and feature importance of ML models. Data from multi-center prospective stroke registries in South Korea were collected. After stepwise data preprocessing, we utilized logistic regression, support vector machine, extreme gradient boosting, light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and multilayer perceptron models. We used the Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) method to evaluate feature importance. Of the 3,623 stroke patients, the 2,363 who had arrived at the hospital within 24 hours of symptom onset and had available information regarding END were included. Of these, 318 (13.5%) had END. The LightGBM model showed the highest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.778, 95% CI, 0.726 - 0.830). The feature importance analysis revealed that fasting glucose level and the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale score were the most influential factors. Among ML algorithms, the LightGBM model was particularly useful for predicting END, as it revealed new and diverse predictors. Additionally, the SHAP method can be adjusted to individualize the features’ effects on the predictive power of the model.