Interpretable machine learning models for predicting clinical pregnancies associated with surgical sperm retrieval from testes of different etiologies: a retrospective study

Abstract

Background The relationship between surgical sperm retrieval of different etiologies and clinical pregnancy is unclear. We aimed to develop a robust and interpretable machine learning (ML) model for predicting clinical pregnancy using the SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) association of surgical sperm retrieval from testes of different etiologies. Methods A total of 345 infertile couples who underwent intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment with surgical sperm retrieval due to different etiologies from February 2020 to March 2023 at the reproductive center were retrospectively analyzed. The six machine learning (ML) models were used to predict the clinical pregnancy of ICSI. After evaluating the performance characteristics of the six ML models, the Extreme Gradient Boosting model (XGBoost) was selected as the best model, and SHAP was utilized to interpret the XGBoost model for predicting clinical pregnancies and to reveal the decision-making process of the model. Results Combining the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), accuracy, precision, recall, F1 score, brier score, and the area under the precision-recall (P-R) curve (AP), the XGBoost model has the best performance (AUROC: 0.858, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.778–0.936, accuracy: 79.71%, brier score: 0.151). The global summary plot of SHAP values shows that the female age is the most important feature influencing the model output. The SHAP plot showed that younger age in females, bigger testicular volume (TV), non-tobacco use, higher anti-müllerian hormone (AMH), lower follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in females, lower FSH in males, the temporary ejaculatory disorders (TED) group, and not the non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) group all resulted in an increased probability of clinical pregnancy. Conclusions The XGBoost model predicts clinical pregnancies associated with testicular sperm retrieval of different etiologies with high accuracy, reliability, and robustness. It can provide clinical counseling decisions for patients with surgical sperm retrieval of various etiologies.