Non-invasive prediction of the chronic degree of lupus nephropathy based on ultrasound radiomics

Objective Through machine learning (ML) analysis of the radiomics features of ultrasound extracted from patients with lupus nephritis (LN), this attempt was made to non-invasively predict the chronicity index (CI) of LN. Methods A retrospective collection of 136 patients with LN who had renal biopsy was retrospectively collected, and the patients were randomly divided into training set and validation set according to 7:3. Radiomics features are extracted from ultrasound images, independent factors are obtained by using LASSO dimensionality reduction, and then seven ML models were used to establish predictive models. At the same time, a clinical model and an US model were established. The diagnostic efficacy of the model is evaluated by analysis of the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve, accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity. The performance of the seven machine learning models was compared with each other and with clinical and US models. Results A total of 1314 radiomics features are extracted from ultrasound images, and 5 features are finally screened out by LASSO for model construction, and the average ROC of the seven ML is 0.683, among which the Xgboost model performed the best, and the AUC in the test set is 0.826 (95% CI: 0.681–0.936). For the same test set, the AUC of clinical model constructed based on eGFR is 0.560 (95% CI: 0.357–0.761), and the AUC of US model constructed based on Ultrasound parameters is 0.679 (95% CI: 0.489–0.853). The Xgboost model is significantly more efficient than the clinical and US models. Conclusion ML model based on ultrasound radiomics features can accurately predict the chronic degree of LN, which can provide a valuable reference for clinicians in the treatment strategy of LN patients.