Breast cancer classification applying artificial metaplasticity algorithm

A novel improvement in neural network training for pattern classification is presented in this paper. The proposed training algorithm is inspired by the biological metaplasticity property of neurons and Shannon's information theory. This algorithm is applicable to artificial neural networks (ANNs) in general, although here it is applied to a multilayer perceptron (MLP). During the training phase, the artificial metaplasticity multilayer perceptron (AMMLP) algorithm assigns higher values for updating the weights in the less frequent activations than in the more frequent ones. AMMLP achieves a more efficient training and improves MLP performance. The well-known and readily available Wisconsin Breast Cancer Database (WBCD) has been used to test the algorithm. Performance of the AMMLP was tested through classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity analysis, and confusion matrix analysis. The results obtained by AMMLP are compared with the backpropagation algorithm (BPA) and other recent classification techniques applied to the same database. The best result obtained so far with the AMMLP algorithm is 99.63%.