Prediction of different types of liver diseases using rule based classification model

BACKGROUND: Diagnosing different types of liver diseases clinically is a quite hectic process because patients have to undergo large numbers of independent laboratory tests. On the basis of results and analysis of laboratory test, different liver diseases are classified. Hence to simplify this complex process, we have developed a Rule Base Classification Model (RBCM) to predict different types of liver diseases. The proposed model is the combination of rules and different data mining techniques. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this paper is to propose a rule based classification model with machine learning techniques for the prediction of different types of Liver diseases. METHOD: A dataset was developed with twelve attributes that include the records of 583 patients in which 441 patients were male and rests were female. Support Vector Machine (SVM), Rule Induction (RI), Decision Tree (DT), Naive Bayes (NB) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) data mining techniques with K-cross fold technique are used with the proposed model for the prediction of liver diseases. The performance of these data mining techniques are evaluated with accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and kappa parameters as well as statistical techniques (ANOVA and Chi square test) are used to analyze the liver disease dataset and independence of attributes. RESULT: Out of 583 patients, 416 patients are liver diseases affected and rests of 167 patients are healthy. The proposed model with decision tree (DT) technique provides the better result among all techniques (RI, SVM, ANN and NB) with all parameters (Accuracy 98.46%, Sensitivity 95.7%, Specificity 95.28% and Kappa 0.983) while the SVM exhibits poor performance (Accuracy 82.33%, Sensitivity 68.03%, Specificity 91.28% and Kappa 0.801). It is also found that the best performance of the model without rules (RI, Accuracy 82.68%, Sensitivity 86.34%, Specificity 90.51% and Kappa 0.619) is almost similar to the worst performance of the rule based classification model (SVM, Accuracy 82.33%, Sensitivity 68.03%, Specificity 91.28% and Kappa 0.801 and the accuracy of chi square test is 76.67%. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that there is a significant difference between the proposed rules based classification model and the model without rules for the liver diseases prediction and the rule based classification model with decision tree (DT) technique provides most accurate result. This model can be used as a valuable tool for medical decision making.