Machine-learning-based approach to differential diagnosis in tuberculous and viral meningitis

Young Seob Jeong, Minjun Jeon, Joung Ha Park, Min Chul Kim, Eunyoung Lee, Se Yoon Park, Yu Mi Lee, Sungim Choi, Seong Yeon Park, Ki Ho Park, Sung Han Kim, Min Huok Jeon, Eun Ju Choo, Tae Hyong Kim, Mi Suk Lee, Tark Kim

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is the most severe form of tuberculosis, but differentiating between the diagnosis of TBM and viral meningitis (VM) is difficult. Thus, we have developed machine-learning modules for differentiating TBM from VM. Material and Methods: For the training data, confirmed or probable TBM and confirmed VM cases were retrospectively collected from five teaching hospitals in Korea between January 2000 - July 2018. Various machine-learning algorithms were used for training. The machinelearning algorithms were tested by the leave-one-out cross-validation. Four residents and two infectious disease specialists were tested using the summarized medical information. Results: The training study comprised data from 60 patients with confirmed or probable TBM and 143 patients with confirmed VM. Older age, longer symptom duration before the visit, lower serum sodium, lower cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) glucose, higher CSF protein, and CSF adenosine deaminase were found in the TBM patients. Among the various machinelearning algorithms, the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristics of artificial neural network (ANN) with ImperativeImputer for matrix completion (0.85; 95% confidence interval 0.79 - 0.89) was found to be the highest. The AUC of the ANN model was statistically higher than those of all the residents (range 0.67 - 0.72, P <0.001) and an infectious disease specialist (AUC 0.76; P = 0.03). Conclusion: The machine-learning techniques may play a role in differentiating between TBM and VM. Specifically, the ANN model seems to have better diagnostic performance than the non-expert clinician.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere82
JournalInfection and Chemotherapy
Volume53
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 by The Korean Society of Infectious Diseases, Korean Society for Antimicrobial Therapy, and The Korean Society for AIDS.

Keywords

  • Diagnosis
  • Machine learning
  • Meningitis
  • Tuberculosis
  • Virus

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