Prediction of fasting plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin using machine learning based on tongue features

Abstract

Background Given tongue features and basic features, this study aimed to develop and assess a non-invasive machine learning model to perform regression prediction on fasting plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin which will help optimize diabetes risk warning. Methods We collected the basic features, tongue features and blood features of the subjects. Using machine learning algorithms to analyze these data, we built models to predict fasting plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin. Then the performance of the models was evaluated through 5-fold cross-validation results and test set results. Results The results of cross validation on the training set showed that given non-invasive input features, the minimum average mean square error of fasting plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin prediction was 1.227 and 0.438. Our non-invasive fasting plasma glucose prediction model with tongue features and basic features combined achieved a minimum mean square error of 0.601 and a maximum coefficient of determination of 0.606 on the test set. The glycated haemoglobin prediction model product a minimum mean square error of 0.272 and a maximum coefficient of determination of 0.539 on the test set. The Clarke’s Error Grid Analysis showed that the non-invasive blending model had 90.83% of points in zone A and 8.49% of points in zone B on the test set. Conclusions We developed an effective non-invasive method for estimating fasting plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin from tongue features and basic features combined, which may help identify individuals at high risk for diabetes.