Ehsan Nabovati; Amir Abas Azizi; Ebrahim Abbasi; Hassan Vakili-Arki; Javad Zarei; Amir Reza Razavi
Volume 10, Issue 6 , December 2012, , Pages 789-799
Abstract
Introduction: In the past decades, machine learning algorithms have become a useful tool for data mining within huge amounts of health data to create prediction models. Burn is one of the diseases that predicting of its outcome has high importance. The aim of this study was to survey two widely used ...
Read More
Introduction: In the past decades, machine learning algorithms have become a useful tool for data mining within huge amounts of health data to create prediction models. Burn is one of the diseases that predicting of its outcome has high importance. The aim of this study was to survey two widely used machine learning algorithms; neural network and decision tree, and compare them with logistic regression method to predict the outcome of burn patients. Methods: In this retrospective observational study, following preprocessing of the data and determining the outcome of patient (live or death), two well-known machine learning algorithms (neural network and decision tree) and logistic regression method were used to create prediction models using data from 4804 burn patients hospitalized in Taleghani Burn Center in Ahvaz during the years 2001-2007. The preprocessing of the data was performed using SPSS (Version16.0), and in the modeling phase, Clementine (Version 12.0) software was used. Moreover, 10-fold cross validation technique was used to validate the model and criteria for evaluating the performance of models were measured and compared. Results: The results showed that the neural network algorithm with accuracy of 97% resulted the most accurate model on the studied data. The decision tree model with 95% accuracy was in the second place and the logistic regression model with an accuracy of 90% was the least accurate. Moreover other evaluating criteria such as sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and AUC showed that performance of the neural network model was better than the others. Conclusion: The current study shows that machine learning algorithms compared with statistical methods create more accurate models. In analyzing the current data, the model created by artificial neural network is more accurate than the other machine learning algorithm, decision tree. Keywords: Data Mining; Machine Learning; Forecasting; Decision Tree; Artificial Neural Network; Burns
