Explanation and prediction of clinical data with imbalanced class distribution based on pattern discovery and disentanglement.

Journal: BMC medical informatics and decision making
PMID:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Statistical data analysis, especially the advanced machine learning (ML) methods, have attracted considerable interest in clinical practices. We are looking for interpretability of the diagnostic/prognostic results that will bring confidence to doctors, patients and their relatives in therapeutics and clinical practice. When datasets are imbalanced in diagnostic categories, we notice that the ordinary ML methods might produce results overwhelmed by the majority classes diminishing prediction accuracy. Hence, it needs methods that could produce explicit transparent and interpretable results in decision-making, without sacrificing accuracy, even for data with imbalanced groups.

Authors

  • Pei-Yuan Zhou
    Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. choupeiyuan.ca@gmail.com.
  • Andrew K C Wong
    Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.