Discrete learning-based intelligent methodology for heart disease diagnosis

Abstract

Classification is one of the most frequently used data mining approaches which has been broadly applied in different fields of sciences, such as engineering, finance, energy, environments, transportation, etc., especially medicine, successfully. Over the years, various intelligent modeling techniques with different properties have been proposed to yield more accurate and more efficient classification results. However, in spite of the different appearance of all of the developed models, the same basic methodology is applied to the learning processes. Based on this methodology, a continuous distance-based cost function is considered and optimized for estimating the unknown parameters in the learning procedures. While using a continuous cost function in the classification field in which the goal function is discrete, is unreasonable or at least quite inefficient. In this paper, in contrast to conventional continuous distance-based methodologies, a novel discrete learning-based methodology is proposed for classification purposes. The main difference between the proposed learning methodology rather than conventional versions is its cost function. In the proposed learning methodology, a mismatching function is considered as a cost function, which is dissimilar to previously developed ones, which are continuous functions based on distance, is a discrete function based on direction. In this way, in the proposed learning process, unknown parameters are discretely adjusted and at once jumped to the target. This is in contrast to conventional continuous learning algorithms in which the unknown parameters are continuously adjusted and step-by-step near the target. The multilayer perceptron (MLP) which is one of the most widely-used intelligent classification approaches, is exemplarily chosen in order to implement the proposed methodology. Although it can be generally demonstrated that the classification rate of the proposed discrete learning-based MLP (DIMLP) model will not be worse than its conventional continuous learning-based one. However, in order to determine the superiority of the proposed DIMLP model, it is exemplarily evaluated on the heart disease diagnosis benchmark data set and several other medical datasets, and its performance is compared to the classic multilayer perceptron model. Empirical results illustrate that, as pre-expected, the classification rate of the proposed model is higher than its conventional version in all data sets. Obtained results indicate that the proposed DIMLP classifier can yield a 94.27 % classification rate in heart disease diagnosis, which approximately indicates a 9.35 % improvement over the classic version, which can only produce an 86.21 % classification rate. Therefore, the proposed methodology is an appropriate and effective alternative learning process for intelligent classification approaches, especially when more accurate results and/or a more reasonable model are required.