Error-correction learning for artificial neural networks using the Bayesian paradigm. Application to automated medical diagnosis

Automated medical diagnosis models are now ubiquitous, and research for developing new ones is constantly growing. They play an important role in medical decision-making, helping physicians to provide a fast and accurate diagnosis. Due to their adaptive learning and nonlinear mapping properties, the artificial neural networks are widely used to support the human decision capabilities, avoiding variability in practice and errors based on lack of experience. Among the most common learning approaches, one can mention either the classical back-propagation algorithm based on the partial derivatives of the error function with respect to the weights, or the Bayesian learning method based on posterior probability distribution of weights, given training data. This paper proposes a novel training technique gathering together the error-correction learning, the posterior probability distribution of weights given the error function, and the Goodman-Kruskal Gamma rank correlation to assembly them in a Bayesian learning strategy. This study had two main purposes: firstly, to develop a novel learning technique based on both the Bayesian paradigm and the error back-propagation, and secondly, to assess its effectiveness. The proposed model performance is compared with those obtained by traditional machine learning algorithms using real-life breast and lung cancer, diabetes, and heart attack medical databases. Overall, the statistical comparison results indicate that the novel learning approach outperforms the conventional techniques in almost all respects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.