A nomogram to predict rupture risk of middle cerebral artery aneurysm

Background Determining the rupture risk of unruptured intracranial aneurysm is crucial for treatment strategy. The purpose of this study was to predict the rupture risk of middle cerebral artery (MCA) aneurysms using a machine learning technique. Methods We retrospectively reviewed 403 MCA aneurysms and randomly partitioned them into the training and testing datasets with a ratio of 8:2. A generalized linear model with logit link was developed using training dataset to predict the aneurysm rupture risk based on the clinical variables and morphological features manually measured from computed tomography angiography. To facilitate the clinical application, we further constructed an easy-to-use nomogram based on the developed model. Results Ruptured MCA aneurysm had larger aneurysm size, aneurysm height, perpendicular height, aspect ratio, size ratio, bottleneck factor, and height-width ratio. Presence of a daughter-sac was more common in ruptured than in unruptured MCA aneurysms. Six features, including aneurysm multiplicity, lobulations, size ratio, bottleneck factor, height-width ratio, and aneurysm angle, were adopted in the model after feature selection. The model achieved a relatively good performance with areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves of 0.77 in the training dataset and 0.76 in the testing dataset. The nomogram provided a visual interpretation of our model, and the rupture risk probability of MCA aneurysms can be directly read from it. Conclusion Our model can be used to predict the rupture risk of MCA aneurysm.