Gradient Boosting Decision Tree Algorithm for the Prediction of Postoperative Intraocular Lens Position in Cataract Surgery

PURPOSE: To develop a method for predicting postoperative anterior chamber depth (ACD) in cataract surgery patients based on preoperative biometry, demographics, and intraocular lens (IOL) power. METHODS: Patients who underwent cataract surgery and had both preoperative and postoperative biometry measurements were included. Patient demographics and IOL power were collected from the Sight Outcomes Research Collaborative (SOURCE) database. A gradient-boosting decision tree model was developed to predict the postoperative ACD. The mean absolute error (MAE) and median absolute error (MedAE) were used as evaluation metrics. The performance of the proposed method was compared with five existing formulas. RESULTS: In total, 847 patients were assigned randomly in a 4:1 ratio to a training/validation set (678 patients) and a testing set (169 patients). Using preoperative biometry and patient sex as predictors, the presented method achieved an MAE of 0.106 ± 0.098 (SD) on the testing set, and a MedAE of 0.082. MAE was significantly lower than that of the five existing methods (P < 0.01). When keratometry was excluded, our method attained an MAE of 0.123 ± 0.109, and a MedAE of 0.093. When IOL power was used as an additional predictor, our method achieved an MAE of 0.105 ± 0.091 and a MedAE of 0.080. CONCLUSIONS: The presented machine learning method achieved greater accuracy than previously reported methods for the prediction of postoperative ACD. TRANSLATIONAL RELEVANCE: Increasing accuracy of postoperative ACD prediction with the presented algorithm has the potential to improve refractive outcomes in cataract surgery.