Construction of Novel Gene Signature-Based Predictive Model for the Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction by Combining Random Forest With Artificial Neural Network

BACKGROUND: Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is one of the most common causes of mortality around the world. Early diagnosis of AMI contributes to improving prognosis. In our study, we aimed to construct a novel predictive model for the diagnosis of AMI using an artificial neural network (ANN), and we verified its diagnostic value via constructing the receiver operating characteristic (ROC). METHODS: We downloaded three publicly available datasets (training sets GSE48060, GSE60993, and GSE66360) from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between 87 AMI and 78 control samples. We applied the random forest (RF) and ANN algorithms to further identify novel gene signatures and construct a model to predict the possibility of AMI. Besides, the diagnostic value of our model was further validated in the validation sets GSE61144 (7 AMI patients and 10 controls), GSE34198 (49 AMI patients and 48 controls), and GSE97320 (3 AMI patients and 3 controls). RESULTS: A total of 71 DEGs were identified, of which 68 were upregulated and 3 were downregulated. Firstly, 11 key genes in 71 DEGs were screened with RF classifier for the classification of AMI and control samples. Then, we calculated the weight of each key gene using ANN. Furthermore, the diagnostic model was constructed and named neuralAMI, with significant predictive power (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.980). Finally, our model was validated with the independent datasets GSE61144 (AUC = 0.900), GSE34198 (AUC = 0.882), and GSE97320 (AUC = 1.00). CONCLUSION: Machine learning was used to develop a reliable predictive model for the diagnosis of AMI. The results of our study provide potential gene biomarkers for early disease screening.