Application of ensemble algorithm integrating multiple criteria feature selection in coronary heart disease detection

Conventional coronary heart disease (CHD) detection methods are expensive, rely much on doctors' subjective experience, and some of them have side effects. In order to obtain rapid, high-precision, low-cost, non-invasive detection results, several methods in machine learning were attempted for CHD detection in this paper. The paper adopted multiple evaluation criteria to measure features, combined with heuristic search strategy and seven common classification algorithms to verify the validity and the importance of feature selection (FS) in the Z-Alizadeh Sani CHD dataset. On this basis, a novelty algorithm integrating multiple FS methods into the ensemble algorithm (ensemble algorithm based on multiple feature selection, EA-MFS) was further proposed. The algorithm adopted Bagging approach to increase data diversity, used the aforementioned MFS methods for functional perturbation, employed major voting method to carry out the decision results, and performed selective integration in terms of the difference of base classifiers in the ensemble process. Compared with the single FS method, the EA-MFS algorithm could comprehensively describe the relationship of features, enhance the classification effect, and displayed better robustness. That meant the EA-MFS algorithm could reduce the dependence on dataset and strengthen the stability of the algorithm, all of which were of great significance for the clinical application of machine learning algorithm in coronary heart disease detection. © 2017 National Taiwan University.