Machine Learning-based Prediction of Relative Regional Air Volume Change from Healthy Human Lung CTs

Machine learning is widely used in various academic fields, and recently it has been actively applied in the medical research. In the medical field, machine learning is used in a variety of ways, such as speeding up diagnosis, discovering new biomarkers, or discovering latent traits of a disease. In the respiratory field, a relative regional air volume change (RRAVC) map based on quantitative inspiratory and expiratory computed tomography (CT) imaging can be used as a useful functional imaging biomarker for characterizing regional ventilation. In this study, we seek to predict RRAVC using various regular machine learning models such as extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and multi-layer perceptron (MLP). We experimentally show that MLP performs best, followed by XGBoost. We also propose several relative coordinate systems to minimize intersubjective variability. We confirm a significant experimental performance improvement when we apply a subject's relative proportion coordinates over conventional absolute coordinates.