Predicting undernutrition among elementary schoolchildren in the Philippines using machine learning algorithms

Undernutrition among children under the age of five is a major public health concern, especially in developing countries. This study aimed to use machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict undernutrition and identify its associated factors. Secondary data analysis of the 2017 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) was performed using R and Python. The main outcomes of interest were undernutrition (stunting: height-for-age (HAZ) < -2 SD; wasting: weight-for-height (WHZ) < -2 SD; and underweight: weight-for-age (WAZ) < -2 SD). Seven ML algorithms were trained and tested: linear discriminant analysis (LDA), logistic model, support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), ridge regression, and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). The ML models were evaluated using the accuracy, confusion matrix, and area under the curve (AUC) receiver operating characteristics (ROC). In total, 8564 children were included in the final analysis. The average age of the children was 926 days, and the majority were females. The weighted prevalence rates of stunting, wasting, and underweight were 17%, 7%, and 12%, respectively. The accuracies of all the ML models for wasting were (LDA: 84%; Logistic: 95%; SVM: 92%; RF: 94%; LASSO: 96%; Ridge: 84%, XGBoost: 98%), stunting (LDA: 86%; Logistic: 86%; SVM: 98%; RF: 88%; LASSO: 86%; Ridge: 86%, XGBoost: 98%), and for underweight were (LDA: 90%; Logistic: 92%; SVM: 98%; RF: 89%; LASSO: 92%; Ridge: 88%, XGBoost: 98%). The AUC values of the wasting models were (LDA: 99%; Logistic: 100%; SVM: 72%; RF: 94%; LASSO: 99%; Ridge: 59%, XGBoost: 100%), for stunting were (LDA: 89%; Logistic: 90%; SVM: 100%; RF: 92%; LASSO: 90%; Ridge: 89%, XGBoost: 100%), and for underweight were (LDA: 95%; Logistic: 96%; SVM: 100%; RF: 94%; LASSO: 96%; Ridge: 82%, XGBoost: 82%). Age, weight, length/height, sex, region of residence and ethnicity were important predictors of wasting, stunting and underweight. The XGBoost model was the best model for predicting wasting, stunting, and underweight. The findings showed that different ML algorithms could be useful for predicting undernutrition and identifying important predictors for targeted interventions among children under five years in Ghana.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Predictive Accuracy of Machine Learning Algorithms Developed Using a National Database for 30-Day Complications Following Total Joint Arthroplasty

Hyperspectral plant phenotyping is a method that has a wide range of applications in various fields, including agriculture, forestry, food processing, medicine and plant breeding. It can be used to obtain a large amount of spectral and spatial information about an object. However, it is important to acknowledge the inherent limitations of this approach, which include the presence of noise and the redundancy of information. The present study aims to assess a novel approach to hyperspectral data preprocessing, namely Random Reflectance (RR), for the classification of plant species. This study employs machine learning (ML) algorithms, specifically Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosting (GB), to analyse the performance of RR in comparison to Min–Max Normalisation (MMN) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The testing process was conducted on data derived from the proximal hyperspectral imaging (HSI) of leaves from three different maple species, which were sampled from trees at 7–10-day intervals between 2021 and 2024. The RF algorithm demonstrated a relative increase of 8.8% in the F1-score in 2021, 9.7% in 2022, 11.3% in 2023 and 11.8% in 2024. The GB algorithm exhibited a similar trend: 6.5% in 2021, 13.2% in 2022, 16.5% in 2023 and 17.4% in 2024. It has been demonstrated that hyperspectral data preprocessing with the MMN and PCA methods does not result in enhanced accuracy when classifying species using ML algorithms. The impact of preprocessing spectral profiles using the RR method may be associated with the observation that the synthesised set of spectral profiles exhibits a stronger reflection of the general parameters of spectral reflectance compared to the set of actual profiles. Subsequent research endeavours are anticipated to elucidate a mechanistic rationale for the RR method in conjunction with the RF and GB algorithms. Furthermore, the efficacy of this method will be evaluated through its application in deep machine learning algorithms.

Introduction: In the skeletal system, the most dimorphic bones employed for postmortem gender prediction include the bones in the pelvic skeleton. Bone measurements are usually conducted with cadaver bones. Computed tomography (CT) is an increasingly popular method due to its ease of use, reconstruction opportunities, and lower impact of age bias and provides a modern data source. Even when parameters obtained with different or same bones are missing, machine learning (ML) algorithms allow the use of statistical methods to predict gender. This study was carried out in order to obtain high accuracy in estimating gender with the pelvis skeleton by integrating ML algorithms, which are used extensively in the field of engineering, in the field of health. Material and Methods: In the present study, pelvic CT images of 300 healthy individuals (150 females, 150 males) between the ages of 25 and 50 (the mean female age = 40, the mean male age = 37) were transformed into orthogonal images, and landmarks were placed on promontory, iliac crest, sacroiliac joint, anterior superior iliac spine, anterior inferior iliac spine, terminal line, obturator foramen, greater trochanter, lesser trochanter, femoral head, femoral neck, body of femur, ischial tuberosity, acetabulum, and pubic symphysis, and coordinates of these regions were obtained. Four groups were formed based on various angle and length combinations obtained from these coordinates. These four groups were analyzed with ML algorithms such as Logistic Regression, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Random Forest, Extra Trees Classifier, and ADA Boost Classifier. Results: In the analysis, it was determined that the highest accuracy was 0.96 (sensitivity 0.95, specificity 0.97, Matthew's Correlation Coefficient 0.93) with LDA. Discussion and Conclusion: The use of length and angle measurements obtained from the pelvis showed that the LDA model was effective in estimating gender.

BackgroundDespite the interest in machine learning (ML) algorithms for analyzing real-world data (RWD) in healthcare, the use of ML in predicting time-to-event data, a common scenario in clinical practice, is less explored. ML models are capable of algorithmically learning from large, complex datasets and can offer advantages in predicting time-to-event data. We reviewed the recent applications of ML for survival analysis using RWD in healthcare.MethodsPUBMED and EMBASE were searched from database inception through March 2023 to identify peer-reviewed English-language studies of ML models for predicting time-to-event outcomes using the RWD. Two reviewers extracted information on the data source, patient population, survival outcome, ML algorithms, and the Area Under the Curve (AUC).ResultsOf 257 citations, 28 publications were included. Random survival forests (N = 16, 57%) and neural networks (N = 11, 39%) were the most popular ML algorithms. There was variability across AUC for these ML models (median 0.789, range 0.6–0.950). ML algorithms were predominately considered for predicting overall survival in oncology (N = 12, 43%). ML survival models were often used to predict disease prognosis or clinical events (N = 27, 96%) in the oncology, while less were used for treatment outcomes (N = 1, 4%).ConclusionsThe ML algorithms, random survival forests and neural networks, are mainly used for RWD to predict survival outcomes such as disease prognosis or clinical events in the oncology. This review shows that more opportunities remain to apply these ML algorithms to inform treatment decision-making in clinical practice. More methodological work is also needed to ensure the utility and applicability of ML models in survival outcomes.

This study presents a comparative analysis of the classification performance of facial and emotion recognition systems using Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) algorithms. The primary objective of this work is to evaluate the applicability of emotion recognition in fields such as psychotherapy and crime analysis, using the FER-2013 dataset.The study was conducted with ML algorithms such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Decision Trees, and Gradient Boosting, as well as the DL algorithm, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Supported by the application of feature selection, preprocessing, and feature extraction techniques, the model’s performance was measured using standard metrics such as accuracy, precision, F1-score, and AUC-ROC.The experimental results showed that the highest classification accuracy (46.61%) was achieved with the CNN model. While the ML models generally offered lower accuracy, they provided advantages in terms of computational efficiency in specific scenarios.This study aims to contribute to the literature by providing a comparative analysis of ML and DL algorithms and by highlighting the effect of data preprocessing on performance. The findings set targets for future work, such as real-time system integration and hybrid model development.

ObjectiveEnhanced technology in computer and internet has driven scale and quality of data to be improved in various areas including healthcare sectors. Machine Learning (ML) has played a pivotal role in efficiently analyzing those big data, but a general misunderstanding of ML algorithms still exists in applying them (e.g., ML techniques can settle a problem of small sample size, or deep learning is the ML algorithm). This paper reviewed the research of diagnosing mental illness using ML algorithm and suggests how ML techniques can be employed and worked in practice.MethodsResearches about mental illness diagnostic using ML techniques were carefully reviewed. Five traditional ML algorithms-Support Vector Machines (SVM), Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, and K-Nearest Neighborhood (KNN)-frequently used for mental health area researches were systematically organized and summarized.ResultsBased on literature review, it turned out that Support Vector Machines (SVM), Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), Random Forest, Naïve Bayes, and K-Nearest Neighborhood (KNN) were frequently employed in mental health area, but many researchers did not clarify the reason for using their ML algorithm though every ML algorithm has its own advantages. In addition, there were several studies to apply ML algorithms without fully understanding the data characteristics.ConclusionResearchers using ML algorithms should be aware of the properties of their ML algorithms and the limitation of the results they obtained under restricted data conditions. This paper provides useful information of the properties and limitation of each ML algorithm in the practice of mental health.

Performances of machine learning algorithms for individual thermal comfort prediction based on data from professional and practical settings

Abstract. As air pollution is regarded as the single largest environmental health risk in Europe it is important that communication to the public is up to date and accurate and provides means to avoid exposure to high air pollution levels. Long- and short-term exposure to outdoor air pollution is associated with increased risks of mortality and morbidity. Up-to-date information on present and coming days' air quality helps people avoid exposure during episodes with high levels of air pollution. Air quality forecasts can be based on deterministic dispersion modelling, but to be accurate this requires detailed information on future emissions, meteorological conditions and process-oriented dispersion modelling. In this paper, we apply different machine learning (ML) algorithms – random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGB), and long short-term memory (LSTM) – to improve 1, 2, and 3 d deterministic forecasts of PM10, NOx, and O3 at different sites in Greater Stockholm, Sweden. It is shown that the deterministic forecasts can be significantly improved using the ML models but that the degree of improvement of the deterministic forecasts depends more on pollutant and site than on what ML algorithm is applied. Also, four feature importance methods, namely the mean decrease in impurity (MDI) method, permutation method, gradient-based method, and Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) method, are utilized to identify significant features that are common and robust across all models and methods for a pollutant. Deterministic forecasts of PM10 are improved by the ML models through the input of lagged measurements and Julian day partly reflecting seasonal variations not properly parameterized in the deterministic forecasts. A systematic discrepancy by the deterministic forecasts in the diurnal cycle of NOx is removed by the ML models considering lagged measurements and calendar data like hour and weekday, reflecting the influence of local traffic emissions. For O3 at the urban background site, the local photochemistry is not properly accounted for by the relatively coarse Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service ensemble model (CAMS) used here for forecasting O3 but is compensated for using the ML models by taking lagged measurements into account. Through multiple repetitions of the training process, the resulting ML models achieved improvements for all sites and pollutants. For NOx at street canyon sites, mean squared error (MSE) decreased by up to 60 %, and seven metrics, such as R2 and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), exhibited consistent results. The prediction of PM10 is improved significantly at the urban background site, whereas the ML models at street sites have difficulty capturing more information. The prediction accuracy of O3 also modestly increased, with differences between metrics. Further work is needed to reduce deviations between model results and measurements for short periods with relatively high concentrations (peaks) at the street canyon sites. Such peaks can be due to a combination of non-typical emissions and unfavourable meteorological conditions, which are rather difficult to forecast. Furthermore, we show that general models trained using data from selected street sites can improve the deterministic forecasts of NOx at the station not involved in model training. For PM10 this was only possible using more complex LSTM models. An important aspect to consider when choosing ML algorithms is the computational requirements for training the models in the deployment of the system. Tree-based models (RF and XGB) require fewer computational resources and yield comparable performance in comparison to LSTM. Therefore, tree-based models are now implemented operationally in the forecasts of air pollution and health risks in Stockholm. Nevertheless, there is big potential to develop generic models using advanced ML to take into account not only local temporal variation but also spatial variation at different stations.

Air pollution in Macau has become a serious problem following the Pearl River Delta’s (PRD) rapid industrialization that began in the 1990s. With this in mind, Macau needs an air quality forecast system that accurately predicts pollutant concentration during the occurrence of pollution episodes to warn the public ahead of time. Five different state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) algorithms were applied to create predictive models to forecast PM2.5, PM10, and CO concentrations for the next 24 and 48 h, which included artificial neural networks (ANN), random forest (RF), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), support vector machine (SVM), and multiple linear regression (MLR), to determine the best ML algorithms for the respective pollutants and time scale. The diurnal measurements of air quality data in Macau from 2016 to 2021 were obtained for this work. The 2020 and 2021 datasets were used for model testing, while the four-year data before 2020 and 2021 were used to build and train the ML models. Results show that the ANN, RF, XGBoost, SVM, and MLR models were able to provide good performance in building up a 24-h forecast with a higher coefficient of determination (R2) and lower root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and biases (BIAS). Meanwhile, all the ML models in the 48-h forecasting performance were satisfactory enough to be accepted as a two-day continuous forecast even if the R2 value was lower than the 24-h forecast. The 48-h forecasting model could be further improved by proper feature selection based on the 24-h dataset, using the Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) value test and the adjusted R2 value of the 48-h forecasting model. In conclusion, the above five ML algorithms were able to successfully forecast the 24 and 48 h of pollutant concentration in Macau, with the RF and SVM models performing the best in the prediction of PM2.5 and PM10, and CO in both 24 and 48-h forecasts.

The objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the performance of different machine learning (ML) algorithms, viz., multi-layer perceptron (MLP), random forest (RF), extra trees regressor (ETR), CatBoost, and gradient boost (GB), considering the impact of variation in sample sizes for theprediction of soil nutrients. In this context, this study evaluates the impact of sample size on the prediction performance of five ML algorithms for mapping 14 soil properties, including key soil physico-chemical properties (soil organic carbon, pH, and electrical conductivity), and multiple macro (available nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur) and micronutrients (available iron, manganese, copper, zinc, and boron) at a geographical extent of 8303 km2 located in eastern India. A total of 1024 surface soil samples were collected, of which 800 were used for model training, while the remaining 224 were reserved for independent validation (IV) of the resultant maps. The original training data set (800 samples) was reduced by random selection into six different sample sizes, i.e., 800, 400, 200, 100, 50, and 25. An exhaustive set of 574 environmental variables, derived from digital terrain derivatives and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, was used as predictors. Popular statistical indicators, such as Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) and root mean squared error (RMSE) were employed to evaluate the predictive capability of the algorithms under different sample size scenarios. The results showed that prediction accuracy and reliability of prediction performance across multiple target variables improved with sample size. However, beyond a certain point, improvement in predictive performance became substantially negligible compared to the efforts in additional sampling. All the ML algorithms performed well (mean IV-CCC varied between 0.26 and 0.64 for different soil properties) to increase insample size, except MLP, which exhibited a poorer prediction performance(mean IV-CCC varied between 0.14 and 0.29 for different soil properties). Micronutrients in general responded well to the increase in sample sizes. The uncertainty analysis revealed that increasing sample size generally reduced prediction uncertainty, though the extent varied by soil property and ML algorithm. Concisely, the results presented herein showed an effective manner of selecting an appropriate sample size and a suitable ML algorithm to predict multiple soil nutrients accurately, which would be recommended to achieve optimal accuracy for a project.

Slope stability prediction using integrated metaheuristic and machine learning approaches: A comparative study

In Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), identifying a high risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s Disease Dementia (AD) is a primary goal for patient management. Machine Learning (ML) algorithms are widely employed to pursue data-driven diagnostic and prognostic goals. An agreement on the stability of these algorithms –when applied to different biomarkers and other conditions– is far from being reached. In this study, we compared the different prognostic performances of three supervised ML algorithms fed with multimodal biomarkers of MCI subjects obtained from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, and eXtreme Gradient Boosting algorithms predict MCI conversion to AD. They can also be simultaneously employed –with the voting procedure– to improve predictivity. AD prediction accuracy is influenced by the nature of the data (i.e., neuropsychological test scores, cerebrospinal fluid AD-related proteins and APOE ε4, cerebral structural MRI (sMRI) data). In our study, independent of the applied ML algorithms, sMRI data showed the lowest accuracy (0.79) compared to other classes. Multimodal data were helpful in the algorithms’ performances by combining clinical and biological measures. Accordingly, using the three ML algorithms, the highest accuracy (0.90) was reached by employing neuropsychological and AD-related biomarkers. Finally, the feature selection procedure indicated that the most critical variables in the respective classes were the ADAS-Cog-13 scale, the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus atrophy, and the ratio between phosphorylated Tau and Aβ42 proteins. In conclusion, our data support the notion that using multiple ML algorithms and multimodal biomarkers helps make more accurate and solid predictions.

Thalassemia trait (TT) and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) are two common types of microcytic hypochromic anemia (MHA), but current diagnostic methods have limitations. This research sought to employ machine learning (ML) algorithms to identify MHA using erythrocyte parameters to distinguish between TT and IDA. One hundred and ninety-three subjects with MHA (98 TT and 95 IDA) were retrospectively analyzed. The cohort was randomized to training set (60%), validation set (20%) and test set (20%). Erythrocyte parameters were collected on an automated hematology analyzer (DxH800, Beckman Coulter), and five ML algorithms were selected to build discriminant models, including Random Forest, XGBoost, logistic regression, AdaBoost and LightGBM. In the assessment of discriminant performance of different models, indicators including sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, AUC, NPV, PPV, cutoff, F1 score and Kappa coefficients were utilized. Among the five ML algorithms aforementioned, the Random Forest and logistic regression models presented excellent discriminant performance, outperforming other models in the testing set, with the AUC value, sensitivity, specificity, and ACC of 0.977, 0.928, 0.953, and 0.940 for Random Forest, and 0.978, 0.879, 0.979, 0.928 for logistic regression. Eight vital peripheral erythrocyte parameters were finally selected, including RBC, RDW, MCV, MCHC, RDWSD, HGB, MAF, and LHD. We successfully developed a discriminant model using ML algorithms based on erythrocyte parameters to identify MHA rapidly from TT or IDA, which may assist patients in taking preventive measures.

The aging and multimorbid population and health personnel shortages pose a substantial burden on primary health care. While predictive machine learning (ML) algorithms have the potential to address these challenges, concerns include transparency and insufficient reporting of model validation and effectiveness of the implementation in the clinical workflow. To systematically identify predictive ML algorithms implemented in primary care from peer-reviewed literature and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Conformité Européene (CE) registration databases and to ascertain the public availability of evidence, including peer-reviewed literature, gray literature, and technical reports across the artificial intelligence (AI) life cycle. PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Emcare, Academic Search Premier, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, MathSciNet, AAAI.org (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence), arXiv, Epistemonikos, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar were searched for studies published between January 2000 and July 2023, with search terms that were related to AI, primary care, and implementation. The search extended to CE-marked or FDA-approved predictive ML algorithms obtained from relevant registration databases. Three reviewers gathered subsequent evidence involving strategies such as product searches, exploration of references, manufacturer website visits, and direct inquiries to authors and product owners. The extent to which the evidence for each predictive ML algorithm aligned with the Dutch AI predictive algorithm (AIPA) guideline requirements was assessed per AI life cycle phase, producing evidence availability scores. The systematic search identified 43 predictive ML algorithms, of which 25 were commercially available and CE-marked or FDA-approved. The predictive ML algorithms spanned multiple clinical domains, but most (27 [63%]) focused on cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Most (35 [81%]) were published within the past 5 years. The availability of evidence varied across different phases of the predictive ML algorithm life cycle, with evidence being reported the least for phase 1 (preparation) and phase 5 (impact assessment) (19% and 30%, respectively). Twelve (28%) predictive ML algorithms achieved approximately half of their maximum individual evidence availability score. Overall, predictive ML algorithms from peer-reviewed literature showed higher evidence availability compared with those from FDA-approved or CE-marked databases (45% vs 29%). The findings indicate an urgent need to improve the availability of evidence regarding the predictive ML algorithms' quality criteria. Adopting the Dutch AIPA guideline could facilitate transparent and consistent reporting of the quality criteria that could foster trust among end users and facilitating large-scale implementation.