Exploring Feature Relationships in Brain Stroke Data Using Polynomial Feature Transformation and Linear Regression Modeling

Abstract

A Cerebral vascular accident, commonly known as a stroke, is a pathological condition that impacts the brain due to the rupture of capillaries. It occurs when there is a disturbance in the typical blood circulation and essential physiological processes of the brain. Stroke prediction plays a crucial role in early diagnosis and intervention, potentially improving patient outcomes. This paper proposes a machine learning model that leverages polynomial feature transformation and linear regression modeling for stroke prediction. The model addresses the challenge of capturing non-linear relationships between features and the target variable while maintaining interpretability. The proposed approach involves preprocessing data by separating categorical and numerical features, applying one-hot encoding to categorical features, and generating polynomial features up to the second degree for numerical features. This tailored preprocessing is facilitated by a Column Transformer. For model development, a machine learning pipeline is constructed, splitting the data into training and testing sets. Despite utilizing polynomial features, linear regression is employed as the final model, allowing for the capture of both linear and non-linear relationships while maintaining interpretability. This work contributes to stroke prediction by offering a balanced approach that considers model complexity and interpretability, showcasing the potential of linear regression with polynomial features for accurate predictions and insights into feature-target relationships. The proposed model exhibited superior performance compared to other existing models, achieving a remarkable testing accuracy of 99.2%.