Artificial neural networks based on principal component analysis input selection for clinical pattern recognition analysis

Two clinical data sets were applied for pattern recognition in order to discover the correlation between urinary nucleoside profiles and tumours. One data set contains 168 clinical urinary samples, of which 84 specimens are from female thyroid cancer patients (malignant tumour group), and the other samples were collected from healthy women (normal group). However, 168 clinical urinary samples comprised the second data set, too. In all the specimens, each number of the samples for both uterine cervical cancer patients (malignant tumour group) and healthy females (normal group) is 60, and the other 48 samples were collected from uterine myoma patients (benign tumour group). For the two data sets, the separation and quantitative determination of the clinical urinary nucleosides were performed by capillary electrophoresis (CE). The pattern recognition was achieved applying multiple layer perceptron artificial neural networks (MLP ANN) based on conjugate gradient descent training algorithm. Moreover, applying the proposed principal component analysis (PCA) input selection scheme to MLP ANN, the accuracy rate of the pattern recognition was improved to some extent (or without any deterioration) even by much simpler structure of MLP ANN. The study showed that MLP ANN based on PCA input selection was a promising tool for pattern recognition.