Fig. 1

The overview of study design. In the phase of model establishment, 240 newly diagnosed AL children (ALL/AML = 174/66), 284 children with non-neoplastic hematological diseases and 220 healthy children were recruited for amino acids quantization with LC–MS/MS (red part). Based on the concentrations of 17 amino acids in all the patients and controls, we evaluated the differences among groups (red part) and the best model was established by Python-sklearn (green part). The model was then improved and verified by parameters adjusting and cross-validation (green part). Finally, another prospective independent cohort consisting of 280 newly diagnosed AL (ALL/AML = 184/96) and 308 children with non-neoplastic hematological diseases were used for further clinical verification as Out-Sample Test (purple part)