An Ensemble Feature Selection Method Based on Deep Forest for Microbiome-Wide Association Studies

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a clinical condition characterized by a decline in cognitive ability and progression of cognitive impairment. It is often considered a transitional stage between normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study aimed to compare deep learning (DL) and traditional machine learning (ML) methods in predicting MCI using plasma proteomic biomarkers. A total of 239 adults were selected from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) cohort along with a pool of 146 plasma proteomic biomarkers. We evaluated seven traditional ML models (support vector machines (SVMs), logistic regression (LR), naïve Bayes (NB), random forest (RF), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), gradient boosting machine (GBM), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)) and six variations of a deep neural network (DNN) model-the DL model in the H2O package. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) selected 35 proteomic biomarkers from the pool. Based on grid search, the DNN model with an activation function of "Rectifier With Dropout" with 2 layers and 32 of 35 selected proteomic biomarkers revealed the best model with the highest accuracy of 0.995 and an F1 Score of 0.996, while among seven traditional ML methods, XGBoost was the best with an accuracy of 0.986 and an F1 Score of 0.985. Several biomarkers were correlated with the APOE-ε4 genotype, polygenic hazard score (PHS), and three clinical cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers (Aβ42, tTau, and pTau). Bioinformatics analysis using Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) revealed several molecular functions and pathways associated with the selected biomarkers, including cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, cholesterol metabolism, and regulation of lipid localization. The results showed that the DL model may represent a promising tool in the prediction of MCI. These plasma proteomic biomarkers may help with early diagnosis, prognostic risk stratification, and early treatment interventions for individuals at risk for MCI.

DBC-Forest: Deep forest with binning confidence screening

Image cyberbullying detection and recognition using transfer deep machine learning

Though large amounts of work with artificial intelligence are used in typhoon rainfall forecasting, the predictive skills of existing models are unsatisfactory. To address this problem, this study aims to propose an improved cluster‐wise typhoon rainfall forecasting model that integrates the grid‐search cross‐validation method with machine learning and deep learning (DL) models including support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), convolutional neural network (CNN), and long short‐term memory (LSTM). Grid‐search cross‐validation is a modified parameterization technique that helps to find the best parameters for machine/DL models. In the first stage, a second‐order polynomial regression model was used to cluster the typhoon track; and in the second stage, cluster‐wise typhoon rainfall was recognized within a 500 km radius from each typhoon center. After that, a modified cluster‐wise typhoon rainfall forecasting model was proposed using cluster‐wise antecedent hourly typhoon rainfall within this distance for 1–6 hr lead time. Results show that the proposed model based on the SVM, RF, AdaBoost, CNN, and LSTM is capable of providing more accurate forecasts (the efficiency of the forecast is increased by 45%–90%) than the existing typhoon rainfall forecasting models that are based on SVM with a genetic algorithm, RF, artificial neural network, multilayer perceptron network, and deep neural network. Therefore, the current study recommends using cluster‐wise typhoon rainfall forecasting model with a grid‐search cross‐validation method for disaster prevention and mitigation.

Automated image classification is an essential task of the computer vision field. The tagging of images into a set of predefined groups is referred to as image classification. The implementation of computer vision to automate image classification would be beneficial because manual image evaluation and identification can be time-consuming, particularly when there are many images of different classes. Deep learning approaches are proven to overperform existing machine learning techniques in many fields in recent years, and computer vision is one of the most notable examples. The very deep neural network (VDCNN) is a powerful deep learning model for image classification, and this paper examines it briefly using MNIST handwritten digit dataset. This dataset is used to prove the efficacy of very deep neural networks over other deep learning models. The proposed study aims to comprehend the very deep neural network architecture used to accomplish a handwritten digit recognition task. The feasibility of the proposed model is evaluated using mean accuracy, validation accuracy, and standard deviation. The study results of the very deep neural network model are compared to a convolutional neural network and convolutional neural network with batch normalization. According to the results of the comparison study, very deep neural networks achieve high accuracy of 99.1% for a handwritten dataset. The outcome of the proposed work is used to interpret how well a very deep neural network performs when compared to the other two models of deep neural networks. This proposed architecture may be used to automate the classification of handwritten digits dataset.

Deep learning (DL) and machine learning (ML) methods have recently contributed to the advancement of models in the various aspects of prediction, planning, and uncertainty analysis of smart cities and urban development. This paper presents the state of the art of DL and ML methods used in this realm. Through a novel taxonomy, the advances in model development and new application domains in urban sustainability and smart cities are presented. Findings reveal that five DL and ML methods have been most applied to address the different aspects of smart cities. These are artificial neural networks; support vector machines; decision trees; ensembles, Bayesians, hybrids, and neuro-fuzzy; and deep learning. It is also disclosed that energy, health, and urban transport are the main domains of smart cities that DL and ML methods contributed in to address their problems.

With the continuous development of science, more and more research results have proved that machine learning is capable of diagnosing and studying the major depressive disorder (MDD) in the brain. We propose a deep learning network with multibranch and local residual feedback, for four different types of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data produced by depressed patients and control people under the condition of listening to positive- and negative-emotions music. We use the large convolution kernel of the same size as the correlation matrix to match the features and obtain the results of feature matching of 264 regions of interest (ROIs). Firstly, four-dimensional fMRI data are used to generate the two-dimensional correlation matrix of one person’s brain based on ROIs and then processed by the threshold value which is selected according to the characteristics of complex network and small-world network. After that, the deep learning model in this paper is compared with support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression (LR), k-nearest neighbor (kNN), a common deep neural network (DNN), and a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for classification. Finally, we further calculate the matched ROIs from the intermediate results of our deep learning model which can help related fields further explore the pathogeny of depression patients.

This study introduces a Deep Neural Network architecture called LightAudioCNN. Its main purpose is to examine cord vibration patterns to improve the diagnosis of Parkinsons’ disease (PD) and differentiate it from similar conditions. LightAudioCNN represents a step in developing more objective and precise diagnostic tools, especially crucial in the early stages of PD, unlike the conventional symptom-based methods known for their arbitrary and unreliable nature. By analyzing vowel sounds (“a” and “i”) from a dataset of 83 participants, this study evaluates LightAudioCNN’s effectiveness while ensuring the reliability of its outcomes using a patient separation method. LightAudioCNN demonstrates high diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, achieving an Area Under the Curve (AUC) score of 0.99 in binary classification tasks and 0.96 in multiclass classification tasks with corresponding accuracy rates of 95% and 81%. These results were obtained through comparisons with Deep Neural Networks trained on Mel Spectrograms and contemporary transformer models processing Mel spectrograms or raw audio data. Additionally, the application of LightAudioCNN to the Italian Parkinson Speech dataset further substantiates its high diagnostic capability. On this dataset, LightAudioCNN achieved a mean accuracy of 97.69%, a precision of 97.88%, and an AUC score of 0.9873, illustrating its ability to capture complex speech patterns associated with Parkinson’s disease. The model’s performance was in line with the other deep learning models. Furthermore, the study highlights the versatility of LightAudioCNN beyond Parkinsons’ disease by proving its superiority in identifying COVID-19 by analyzing breath patterns and cough sounds. In this comparison, LightAudioCNN surpasses deep learning and traditional machine learning models by achieving a mean accuracy of 78.81% in the same scenarios. This proves the model’s potential for quickly and accurately diagnosing COVID-19, demonstrating its relevance across conditions. The model also has a small footprint of about 3.1 M parameters, which is about 7 times less than standard computer vision architectures such as ResNet50, allowing the integration of this technology locally into smartphone applications with the aim of managing and treating not just Parkinson’s’ Disease but also emerging health threats, like COVID-19.

Despite advances in diagnostics, the objective and repeatable assessment of patients with neurological deficits (e.g., stroke) remains a major challenge. Modern methods based on artificial intelligence (AI) are of interest to researchers and clinicians in this area. This study presents a comparative analysis of different AI approaches used to analyze gait of stroke patients using a retrospective dataset of 120 individuals. The main objective is to evaluate the effectiveness, accuracy, and clinical relevance of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models in identifying gait abnormalities and predicting rehabilitation outcomes. Multiple AI techniques—including support vector machines (SVM), random forests (RF), k-nearest neighbors (k-NN), and convolutional neural networks (CNN)—were trained and tested on time-series gait data with spatiotemporal parameters. Performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and area under the curve (AUC) were used to compare model results. Initial results indicate that DL models, particularly CNNs, outperform traditional ML methods in capturing complex gait patterns and providing reliable classification. However, simpler models showed advantages in interpretability and computational efficiency. This study highlights the potential and shortcomings of AI-based gait analysis tools in supporting clinical decision-making and planning personalized stroke rehabilitation.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IMID) of the central nervous system (CNS). Early identification of MS, especially as a screening method for at-risk individuals, is crucial to delay disease progression and improve patient outcomes by preventing future irreversible neurologic damage. In this work, we utilize well-validated tracking scanning laser ophthalmoscope (TSLO) image to predict MS compared to the unaffected controls. While traditional Machine Learning (ML) methods, such as Logistic Regression (LR), have demonstrated a strong predictive power [Mauro F. Pinto et al., 2020] in disease identification, we propose the use of a novel DL based model. Though the use of Deep Neural Network (DNN), this model can have a much higher learning capacity to capture latent features embedded in the retinal images. We hypothesize that such latent information, often hidden in ML feature engineering processes, plays an important role for the prediction of disease and can be well represented by DL models. To establish a DL based model capable of learning latent image features to provide predictive power for the presence of MS. Utilize a deep convolutional neural network to extract the retinal coding and implement a recurrent neural network to learn the temporal correlations in video sequences. Our approaches were tested using a 250-subject MS/control database collected at the UCSF. Patients with Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS)< 4 are compared to healthy subjects. Both raw retinal images and the frequency and spatial patterns of the eye motion are combined to construct a hybrid image, denoted as "retinal coding", and directly fed to the DL model for training and testing. Preliminary results on predictive power were measured using Area-under-Curve (AUC) of the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve, sensitivity, and specificity, as well as an F-1 score. We observe an AUC of 0.920, sensitivity of 0.90, specificity of 0.89 and F-1 score of 0.89 using the DL model to distinguish MS from controls, which outperforms the baseline LR model by 24%. This work can be considered as a proof-of-concept concerning the possibility of identifying MS disease using a DL based approach. The results demonstrate the possibility of predicting early-stage MS and understanding disease's dynamics. Such end-to-end model could be generalizable and trained on other disease states.

Increasing numbers of software vulnerabilities are discovered every year whether they are reported publicly or discovered internally in proprietary code. These vulnerabilities can pose serious risk of exploit and result in system compromise, information leaks, or denial of service. We leveraged the wealth of C and C++ open-source code available to develop a largescale function-level vulnerability detection system using machine learning. To supplement existing labeled vulnerability datasets, we compiled a vast dataset of millions of open-source functions and labeled it with carefully-selected findings from three different static analyzers that indicate potential exploits. Using these datasets, we developed a fast and scalable vulnerability detection tool based on deep feature representation learning that directly interprets lexed source code. We evaluated our tool on code from both real software packages and the NIST SATE IV benchmark dataset. Our results demonstrate that deep feature representation learning on source code is a promising approach for automated software vulnerability detection.

Evaluation of multispectral imaging for freeze damage assessment in strawberries using AI-based computer vision technology

Industrial robots are widely used in critical tasks such as assembly, welding, and material handling as core components of modern manufacturing systems. For the reliable operation of these systems, early and accurate detection of execution failures is crucial. In this study, a comprehensive comparison of machine learning and deep learning methods is conducted for the classification of robot execution failures using data acquired from force-torque sensors. Three different feature engineering approaches are proposed. The first is a Baseline approach that includes 90 raw time-series features. The second is the Domain-6 approach, which consists of 6 basic statistical features per sensor (36 in total). The third is the Domain-12 approach, which comprises 12 comprehensive statistical features per sensor (72 in total). The domain features include the mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, range, slope, median, skewness, kurtosis, RMS, energy, and IQR. In total, ten classification algorithms are evaluated, including eight machine learning methods and two deep learning models: Support Vector Machines (SVM), Random Forest (RF), k-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Naive Bayes (NB), Decision Trees (DT), eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM-LGBM), as well as a One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN-1D) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). For traditional machine learning algorithms, 5 × 5 nested cross-validation is used, whereas for deep learning models, 5-fold cross-validation with a 20% validation split is employed. To ensure statistical reliability, all experiments are repeated over 30 independent runs. The experimental results demonstrate that feature engineering has a decisive impact on classification performance. In addition, regardless of the feature set, the highest accuracy (93.85% ± 0.90) is achieved by the Naive Bayes classifier using the Baseline features. The Domain-12 feature set provides consistent improvements across many algorithms, with substantial performance gains. The results are reported using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score metrics and are supported by confusion matrices. Finally, permutation feature importance analysis indicates that the skewness features of the Fx and Fy sensors are the most critical variables for failure detection. Overall, these findings show that time-domain statistical features offer an effective approach for robot failure classification.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading causes of vision loss in adults and is one of the detrimental side effects of the mass prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus (DM). It is crucial to have an efficient screening method for early diagnosis of DR to prevent vision loss. This paper compares and analyzes the various Machine Learning (ML) techniques, from traditional ML to advanced Deep Learning models. We compared and analyzed the efficacy of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Capsule Networks (CapsNet), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), decision trees, and Random Forests. This paper also considers determining factors in the evaluation, including contrast enhancements, noise reduction, grayscaling, etc We analyze recent research studies and compare methodologies and metrics, including accuracy, precision, sensitivity, and specificity. The findings highlight the advanced performance of Deep Learning (DL) models, with CapsNet achieving a remarkable accuracy of up to 97.98% and a high precision rate, outperforming other traditional ML methods. The Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) preprocessing technique substantially enhanced the model’s efficiency. Each ML method’s computational requirements are also considered. While most advanced deep learning methods performed better according to the metrics, they are more computationally complex, requiring more resources and data input. We also discussed how datasets like MESSIDOR could be more straightforward and contribute to highly evaluated performance and that there is a lack of consistency regarding benchmark datasets across papers in the field. Using the DL models facilitates accurate early detection for DR screening, can potentially reduce vision loss risks, and improves accessibility and cost-efficiency of eye screening. Further research is recommended to extend our findings by building models with public datasets, experimenting with ensembles of DL and traditional ML models, and considering testing high-performing models like CapsNet.

Accurate rainfall forecasting is crucial in activities such as agricultural planning, water resource management, and flood preparedness, so failure to accurately forecast rainfall might undermine these activities. This study aimed to improve the accuracy of daily rainfall prediction in Hai district, Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania, a region characterised by a bimodal rainfall pattern, by comparing rainfall prediction accuracies of Traditional Machine Learning (TML) and Deep Learning (DL) models. The 25-year daily rainfall dataset for Hai district was first pre-processed by cleaning, normalisation, and splitting into training (first 60%), validation (next 20%), and test (last 20%) sets. TML models (K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) through its variant KNN Regressor and Support Vector Machine (SVM) through its variant Support Vector Regressor (SVR)) were developed, trained, and their performances compared with developed and trained DL models (Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU)). Each model’s test performance was evaluated using the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) metric. The findings revealed that the DL models, LSTM and GRU, achieved test RMSE scores of 6.35 mm and 6.49 mm, respectively, while the TML models, KNN and SVM, achieved test RMSE scores of 6.61 mm and 10.42 mm, respectively. The study demonstrated that DL models are more effective for accurate rainfall forecasting than TML models in regions with complex rainfall patterns. The insights gained will guide the development of more reliable, location-specific weather prediction systems, ultimately supporting informed decision-making in agriculture, environmental management, and flood risk reduction in Tanzania and other regions facing similar climatic challenges