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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.

Sec. Endovascular and Interventional Neurology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1667119

Interpretable Machine Learning for Predicting Early Neurological Deterioration in Symptomatic Intracranial Atherosclerotic Stenosis

Provisionally accepted
Yang  YangYang Yang1Chunhao  MeiChunhao Mei1Xiaoning  GuoXiaoning Guo1Jiajia  ChenJiajia Chen2Tingting  TaoTingting Tao1*Qingguang  WangQingguang Wang1*
  • 1Jiangyin Clinical College of Xuzhou Medical University, Jiangyin, China
  • 2Jiangyin Fifth People's Hospital, jiangyin, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background: To develop and validate a machine learning (ML) model for early neurological deterioration (END) risk prediction in patients with symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (SICAS). Methods: This retrospective cohort study enrolled 557 patients with SICAS between January 2022 and December 2024. Relevant clinical data were collected. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression selected predictive features from clinical/imaging variables. Five ML algorithms, including Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB), Gradient Boosting Decision Trees (GBDT), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), and Logistic Regression (LR), were trained (70% of the data) and validated (30% of the data) using 10-fold cross-validation. Model performance was assessed using the area under the curve (AUC), calibration, and decision curve analysis (DCA). Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) interpreted the feature contributions. Results: The overall incidence rate of END was 18.13%. The XGBoost model outperformed the other models, achieving a validation AUC of 0.874 (95% CI, 0.809–0.939), a sensitivity of 0.749, a specificity of 0.859, and excellent calibration (deviation: 0.116). DCA indicates the clinical utility of the XGBoost model. Key predictors included the NIHSS score (strongest driver), vascular stenosis severity, Triglyceride Glucose (TyG) index, age, initial systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diabetes. SHAP analysis provided interpretability for the machine learning model and revealed essential factors related to the risk of END in SICAS. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential of ML in predicting END in SICAS patients. The SHAP method enhances the interpretability of the prediction model, providing a practical and implementable solution for the early identification of high-risk patients.

Keywords: Early Neurological Deterioration1, Acute ischemic stroke2, Symptomatic IntracranialAtherosclerotic Stenosis3, machine learning4, XGBoost mode5, SHAP6

Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Mei, Guo, Chen, Tao and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Tingting Tao, ttt04170631@126.com
Qingguang Wang, wqg1995@163.com

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