Development of Symbolic Expressions Ensemble for Breast Cancer Type Classification Using Genetic Programming Symbolic Classifier and Decision Tree Classifier

Simple Summary Breast cancer is a type of cancer with several sub-types and correct sub-type classification based on a large number of gene expressions is challenging even for artificial intelligence. However, the accurate classification of breast cancer in a patient is mandatory for the application of proper treatment. To obtain the equations that can be used for accurate classification of breast cancer sub-type the genetic programming symbolic classifier was utilized. A large number of input variables (gene expressions) were reduced using principle component analysis and the imbalance between class samples was solved using different oversampling methods. The proposed procedure generated equations that can classify breast cancer sub-types with high classification accuracy which was slightly improved with the application of the decision tree classifier method. Breast cancer is a type of cancer with several sub-types. It occurs when cells in breast tissue grow out of control. The accurate sub-type classification of a patient diagnosed with breast cancer is mandatory for the application of proper treatment. Breast cancer classification based on gene expression is challenging even for artificial intelligence (AI) due to the large number of gene expressions. The idea in this paper is to utilize the genetic programming symbolic classifier (GPSC) on the publicly available dataset to obtain a set of symbolic expressions (SEs) that can classify the breast cancer sub-type using gene expressions with high classification accuracy. The initial problem with the used dataset is a large number of input variables (54,676 gene expressions), a small number of dataset samples (151 samples), and six classes of breast cancer sub-types that are highly imbalanced. The large number of input variables is solved with principal component analysis (PCA), while the small number of samples and the large imbalance between class samples are solved with the application of different oversampling methods generating different dataset variations. On each oversampled dataset, the GPSC with random hyperparameter values search (RHVS) method is trained using 5-fold cross validation (5CV) to obtain a set of SEs. The best set of SEs is chosen based on mean values of accuracy (ACC), the area under the receiving operating characteristic curve (AUC), precision, recall, and F1-score values. In this case, the highest classification accuracy is equal to 0.992 across all evaluation metric methods. The best set of SEs is additionally combined with a decision tree classifier, which slightly improves ACC to 0.994.