Application of machine intelligence for osteoarthritis classification: a classical implementation and a quantum perspective

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in the knee that comes with a variation in symptoms' intensity, frequency and pattern. Knee OA (KOA) is often diagnosed using invasive and expensive methods that can measure changes in joint morphology and function. Early and accurate identification of significant risk factors in clinical data is of vital importance in diagnosing KOA. A machine intelligence approach is proposed here to enable automated, non-invasive identification of risk factors from self-reported clinical data about joint symptoms, disability, function and general health. The proposed methodology was applied to recognize participants with symptomatic KOA or being at high risk of developing KOA in at least one knee. Different machine learning and deep learning algorithms were tested and compared in terms of multiple criteria e.g. accuracy, per class accuracy and execution time. Deep learning was proved to be the most effective in terms of accuracy with classification accuracies up to 86.95%, evaluated on data from the osteoarthritis initiative study. Insights about ten different feature subsets and their effect on classification accuracy are provided. The proposed methodology was also demonstrated in subgroups defined by gender and age. The results suggest that machine intelligence and especially deep learning may facilitate clinical evaluation, monitoring and even prediction of knee osteoarthritis. Apart from the classical implementation of the proposed methodology, a quantum perspective is also discussed highlighting the future application of quantum computers in OA diagnosis.