Ultrasound-led stratification of carpal tunnel syndrome reveals structure-function mismatch

Abstract

The severity stratification of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) relies on ultrasound morphological markers and electromyography. However, it remains unclear how structural imaging can reliably infer functional impairment. Clarifying the structure-function relationship is critical for efficient diagnostic pathways. A retrospective cohort of 55 patients with symptoms related to CTS was analyzed at the Shanghai Sixth Peoples Hospital. All patients were subjected to ultrasound and EMG. 72.7% cases were diagnosed with CTS with a female predominance and equal left-right involvement. Random-forest classifiers were trained using surrogate splits, and performance was evaluated using predictions outside the bag. A full-feature model (34 candidate variables) was compared against a simplified model (8 core variables) capturing the core morphological and electrophysiological features. A residual-based framework was then used to characterize the structure-function mismatch within severity grades (1a-3c). The simplified model improved discriminative performance compared to the full-feature model (AUC 0.789 to 0.824). The simplified model achieved an overall accuracy of 77.3%. Analysis of predicted probability distributions and 10-bin calibration curves indicated stable and clinically interpretable risk estimation in most probability ranges. Permutation-based importance analysis confirmed that both ultrasound and electrophysiological features contributed substantively to prediction. Residual-based grading further revealed structure- function heterogeneity within each main severity grade. CTS severity can be stratified using a limited set of complementary morphological and electrophysiological features. Structure-function mismatch supports an imaging-led initial screening, with electrophysiology reserved for selected patients.