Research: A machine and deep Learning Approach to predict pulmonary hypertension in newborns with congenital diaphragmatic Hernia (CLANNISH): Protocol for a retrospective study

PLoS One

. 2021 Nov 9;16(11):e0259724. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259724. eCollection 2021. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34752491/

A maChine and deep Learning Approach to predict pulmoNary hyperteNsIon in newbornS with congenital diaphragmatic Hernia (CLANNISH): Protocol for a retrospective study

Ilaria Amodeo 1Giorgio De Nunzio 2 3 4Genny Raffaeli 1 5Irene Borzani 6Alice Griggio 7Luana Conte 2 3 4Francesco Macchini 8Valentina Condò 1Nicola Persico 5 9Isabella Fabietti 9Stefano Ghirardello 1Maria Pierro 10Benedetta Tafuri 2 3 4Giuseppe Como 1Donato Cascio 11Mariarosa Colnaghi 1Fabio Mosca 1 5Giacomo Cavallaro 1Affiliations expand

Free PMC article

Abstract

Introduction: Outcome predictions of patients with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) still have some limitations in the prenatal estimate of postnatal pulmonary hypertension (PH). We propose applying Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Learning (DL) approaches to fetuses and newborns with CDH to develop forecasting models in prenatal epoch, based on the integrated analysis of clinical data, to provide neonatal PH as the first outcome and, possibly: favorable response to fetal endoscopic tracheal occlusion (FETO), need for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), survival to ECMO, and death. Moreover, we plan to produce a (semi)automatic fetus lung segmentation system in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which will be useful during project implementation but will also be an important tool itself to standardize lung volume measures for CDH fetuses.

Methods and analytics: Patients with isolated CDH from singleton pregnancies will be enrolled, whose prenatal checks were performed at the Fetal Surgery Unit of the Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico (Milan, Italy) from the 30th week of gestation. A retrospective data collection of clinical and radiological variables from newborns’ and mothers’ clinical records will be performed for eligible patients born between 01/01/2012 and 31/12/2020. The native sequences from fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) will be collected. Data from different sources will be integrated and analyzed using ML and DL, and forecasting algorithms will be developed for each outcome. Methods of data augmentation and dimensionality reduction (feature selection and extraction) will be employed to increase sample size and avoid overfitting. A software system for automatic fetal lung volume segmentation in MRI based on the DL 3D U-NET approach will also be developed.

Ethics and dissemination: This retrospective study received approval from the local ethics committee (Milan Area 2, Italy). The development of predictive models in CDH outcomes will provide a key contribution in disease prediction, early targeted interventions, and personalized management, with an overall improvement in care quality, resource allocation, healthcare, and family savings. Our findings will be validated in a future prospective multicenter cohort study.

Registration: The study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov with the identifier NCT04609163.

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