Rapid detection of serological biomarkers in gallbladder carcinoma using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy combined with machine learning

Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is the most common malignant tumour of the biliary tract. GBC is difficult to diagnose and treat at an early stage because of the lack of effective serum markers and typical symptoms, resulting in low survival rates. This study aimed to investigate the applicability of dried serum Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy combined with machine learning algorithms to correctly differentiate patients with GBC from patients with gallbladder disease (GBD), cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and healthy individuals. The differentiation between healthy individuals and GBC serum was better using principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for six spectral regions, especially in the protein (1710-1475 cm−1) and combined (1710–1475 + 1354-980 cm−1) region. However, the PCA-LDA model poorly differentiated GBC from GBD, CCA, and HCC in serum spectra. We evaluated the PCA- LDA, PCA-support vector machine (SVM), and radial basis kernel function support vector machine (RBF-SVM) models for GBC diagnosis and found that the RBF-SVM model performed the best, with 88.24–95% accuracy, 95.83% sensitivity, and 78.38–94.44% specificity in the 1710–1475 + 1354-980 cm−1 region. This study demonstrated that serum FTIR spectroscopy combined with the RBF-SVM algorithm has great clinical potential for GBC screening. [Display omitted] •The serum FTIR spectroscopy between gallbladder cancer patients and other hepatobiliary disease subjects is different.•The serum FTIR spectroscopy has the advantage of simple, rapid, high accuracy and low cost.•Serum FTIR spectroscopy combined with machine learning has the potential for early screening of gallbladder cancer.