Machine learning-based system for prediction of ascites grades in patients with liver cirrhosis using laboratory and clinical data: design and implementation study

Abstract Objectives The aim of the study was to implement a non-invasive model to predict ascites grades among patients with cirrhosis. Methods In the present study, we used modern machine learning (ML) methods to develop a scoring system solely based on routine laboratory and clinical data to help physicians accurately diagnose and predict different degrees of ascites. We used ANACONDA3–5.2.0 64 bit, free and open-source platform distribution of Python programming language with numerous modules, packages, and rich libraries that provide various methods for classification problems. Through the 10-fold cross-validation, we employed three common learning models on our dataset, k-nearest neighbors (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), and neural network classification algorithms. Results According to the data received from the research institute, three types of data analysis have been performed. The algorithms used to predict ascites were KNN, cross-validation (CV), and multilayer perceptron neural networks (MLPNN), which achieved an average accuracy of 94, 91, and 90%, respectively. Also, in the average accuracy of the algorithms, KNN had the highest accuracy of 94%. Conclusions We applied well-known ML approaches to predict ascites. The findings showed a strong performance compared to the classical statistical approaches. This ML-based approach can help to avoid unnecessary risks and costs for patients with acute stages of the disease.