Predicting Long-Term Outcome of Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness in Children Through Machine Learning Based on Conventional Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Background The prognosis of prolonged disorders of consciousness (pDoC) in children has consistently posed a formidable challenge in clinical decision-making. Objective This study aimed to develop a machine learning (ML) model based on conventional structural magnetic resonance imaging (csMRI) to predict outcomes in children with pDoC. Methods A total of 196 children with pDoC were included in this study. Based on the consciousness states 1 year after brain injury, the children were categorized into either the favorable prognosis group or the poor prognosis group. They were then randomly assigned to the training set (n = 138) or the test set (n = 58). Semi-quantitative visual assessments of brain csMRI were conducted and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression was used to identify significant features predicting outcomes. Based on the selected features, support vector machine (SVM), random forests (RF), and logistic regression (LR) were used to develop csMRI, clinical, and csMRI-clinical-merge models, respectively. Finally, the performances of all models were evaluated. Results Seven csMRI features and 4 clinical features were identified as important predictors of consciousness recovery. All models achieved satisfactory prognostic performances (all areas under the curve [AUCs] >0.70). Notably, the csMRI model developed using the SVM exhibited the best performance, with an AUC, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 0.851, 0.845, 0.844, and 0.846, respectively. Conclusions: A csMRI-based prediction model for the prognosis of children with pDoC was developed, showing potential to predict recovery of consciousness 1 year after brain injury and is worth popularizing in clinical practice.