Forecasting COVID-19 Severity by Intelligent Optical Fingerprinting of Blood Samples

Faria, Simão P.; Carpinteiro, Cristiana; Pinto, Vanessa; Rodrigues, Sandra M.; Alves, José; Marques, Filipe; Lourenço, Marta; Santos, Paulo H.; Ramos, Angélica; Cardoso, Maria J.; Guimarães, João T.; Rocha, Sara; Sampaio, Paula; Clifton, David A.; Mumtaz, Mehak; Paiva, Joana S.

Forecasting COVID-19 disease severity is key to supporting clinical decision making and assisting resource allocation, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs). Here, we investigated the utility of time- and frequency-related features of the backscattered signal of serum patient samples to predict COVID-19 disease severity immediately after diagnosis. ICU admission was the primary outcome used to define disease severity. We developed a stacking ensemble machine learning model including the backscattered signal features (optical fingerprint), patient comorbidities, and age (AUROC = 0.80), which significantly outperformed the predictive value of clinical and laboratory variables available at hospital admission (AUROC = 0.71). The information derived from patient optical fingerprints was not strongly correlated with any clinical/laboratory variable, suggesting that optical fingerprinting brings unique information for COVID-19 severity risk assessment. Optical fingerprinting is a label-free, real-time, and low-cost technology that can be easily integrated as a front-line tool to facilitate the triage and clinical management of COVID-19 patients.