Interpretable Machine Learning for COVID-19: An Empirical Study on Severity Prediction Task

Black-box nature hinders the deployment of many high-accuracy models in medical diagnosis. It is risky to put one's life in the hands of models that medical researchers do not trust. However, to understand the mechanism of a new virus, such as COVID-19, machine learning models may catch important symptoms that medical practitioners do not notice due to the surge of infected patients during a pandemic. In this work, the interpretation of machine learning models reveals that a high C-reactive protein (CRP) corresponds to severe infection, and severe patients usually go through a cardiac injury, which is consistent with well-established medical knowledge. Additionally, through the interpretation of machine learning models, we find phlegm and diarrhea are two important symptoms, without which indicate a high risk of turning severe. These two symptoms are not recognized at the early stage of the outbreak, whereas our findings are corroborated by later autopsies of COVID-19 patients. We find patients with a high N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP) have a significantly increased risk of death which does not receive much attention initially but proves true by the following-up study. Thus, we suggest interpreting machine learning models can offer help to diagnosis at the early stage of an outbreak.

Is AI Model Interpretable to Combat with COVID? An Empirical Study on Severity Prediction Task

Black-box nature hinders the deployment of many high-accuracy models in medical diagnosis. Putting one's life in the hands of models that medical researchers do not trust it's irresponsible. However, to understand the mechanism of a new virus, such as COVID-19, machine learning models may catch important symptoms that medical practitioners do not notice due to the surge of infected patients caused by a pandemic. In this work, the interpretation of machine learning models reveals a high CRP corresponds to severe infection, and severe patients usually go through a cardiac injury, which is consistent with medical knowledge. Additionally, through the interpretation of machine learning models, we find phlegm and diarrhea are two important symptoms, without which indicate a high risk of turning severe. These two symptoms are not recognized at the early stage of the outbreak, but later our findings are corroborated by autopsies of COVID-19 patients. And we find patients with a high NTproBNP have a significantly increased risk of death which does not receive much attention initially but proves true by the following-up study. Thus, we suggest interpreting machine learning models can offer help to understanding a new virus at the early stage of an outbreak.