Measuring saliency of features extracted by model-based methods from internal carotid arterial Doppler signals using signal-to-noise ratios

Medical diagnostic accuracies can be improved when the pattern is simplified through representation by important features. The feature vector, which is comprised of the set of all features used to describe a pattern, is a reduced-dimensional representation of that pattern. The noise in a classification model can be reduced by identifying a set of salient features and then more accurate classification can be obtained. In this study, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) saliency measure was employed to determine saliency of input features of probabilistic neural networks (PNNs) used in classification of internal carotid arterial Doppler signals (ICADS). In order to extract features representing the ICADS, model-based methods were used. The PNNs used in the ICADS classification were trained for the SNR screening method. The application results of the SNR screening method to the ICADS demonstrated that classification accuracies of the PNNs with salient input features are higher than that of the PNNs with salient and nonsalient input features.