Artificial Intelligence in Plasma Cell Myeloma: Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines in the Classification of Plasma Cell Myeloma Data at Diagnosis.

backgroundPlasma cell neoplasm and/or plasma cell myeloma (PCM) is a mature B-cell lymphoproliferative neoplasm of plasma cells that secrete a single homogeneous immunoglobulin called paraprotein or M-protein. Plasma cells accumulate in the bone marrow (BM) leading to bone destruction and BM failure. Diagnosis of PCM is based on clinical, radiologic, and pathological characteristics. The percent of plasma cells by manual differential (bone marrow morphology), the white blood cell (WBC) count, cytogenetics, fluorescence

methodsA new artificial neural network (ANN) classification model was developed and tested in Python programming language with a first data set of 301 cases and a second data set of 176 cases for a total of 477 cases of PCM at diagnosis. Classification model was also developed with support vector machines (SVM) algorithm in R studio and interactive data visuals using Tableau.

resultsThe resulting ANN algorithm had 94% accuracy for the first and second data sets with a classification summary of precision (PPV): 0.97, recall (sensitivity): 0.76, f1 score: 0.83, and accuracy of logistic regression of 1.0. SVM of plasma cells versus TP53 revealed a 95% accuracy level.

conclusionA novel classification model based only on specific morphological and genetic variables was developed using a machine learning algorithm, the ANN. ANN identified an association of WBC and BM plasma cell percentage with two of the high-risk genetic categories in the diagnostic cases of PCM. With further training and testing of additional data sets that include morphologic and additional genetic rearrangements, the newly developed ANN model has the potential to develop an accurate classification of high-risk categories of PCM.