A CASE STUDY ON SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES VERSUS ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

The capability of artificial neural networks for pattern recognition of real world problems is well known. In recent years, the support vector machine has been advocated for its structure risk minimization leading to tolerance margins of decision boundaries. Structures and performances of these pattern classifiers depend on the feature dimension and training data size. The objective of this research is to compare these pattern recognition systems based on a case study. The particular case considered is on classification of hypertensive and normotensive right ventricle (RV) shapes obtained from Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) sequences. In this case, the feature dimension is reasonable, but the available training data set is small, however, the decision surface is highly nonlinear.For diagnosis of congenital heart defects, especially those associated with pressure and volume overload problems, a reliable pattern classifier for determining right ventricle function is needed. RV¡¦s global and regional surface to volume ratios are assessed from an individual¡¦s MRI heart images. These are used as features for pattern classifiers. We considered first two linear classification methods: the Fisher linear discriminant and the linear classifier trained by the Ho-Kayshap algorithm. When the data are not linearly separable, artificial neural networks with back-propagation training and radial basis function networks were then considered, providing nonlinear decision surfaces. Thirdly, a support vector machine was trained which gives tolerance margins on both sides of the decision surface. We have found in this case study that the back-propagation training of an artificial neural network depends heavily on the selection of initial weights, even though randomized. The support vector machine where radial basis function kernels are used is easily trained and provides decision tolerance margins, in spite of only small margins

Modeling Financial Time Series with Artificial Neural Networks

Financial time series convey the decisions and actions of a population of human actors over time. Econometric and regressive models have been developed in the past decades for analyzing these time series. More recently, biologically inspired artificial neural network models have been shown to overcome some of the main challenges of traditional techniques by better exploiting the non-linear, non-stationary, and oscillatory nature of noisy, chaotic human interactions. This review paper explores the options, benefits, and weaknesses of the various forms of artificial neural networks as compared with regression techniques in the field of financial time series analysis.CELEST, a National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center (SBE-0354378); SyNAPSE program of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (HR001109-03-0001

Probabilistic classification of acute myocardial infarction from multiple cardiac markers

Logistic regression and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifiers have been trained to estimate the probability of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients based upon the concentrations of a panel of cardiac markers. The panel consists of two new markers, fatty acid binding protein (FABP) and glycogen phosphorylase BB (GPBB), in addition to the traditional cardiac troponin I (cTnI), creatine kinase MB (CKMB) and myoglobin. The effect of using principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) to preprocess the marker concentrations was also investigated. The need for classifiers to give an accurate estimate of the probability of AMI is argued and three categories of performance measure are described, namely discriminatory ability, sharpness, and reliability. Numerical performance measures for each category are given and applied. The optimum classifier, based solely upon the samples take on admission, was the logistic regression classifier using FDA preprocessing. This gave an accuracy of 0.85 (95% confidence interval: 0.78–0.91) and a normalised Brier score of 0.89. When samples at both admission and a further time, 1–6 h later, were included, the performance increased significantly, showing that logistic regression classifiers can indeed use the information from the five cardiac markers to accurately and reliably estimate the probability AMI

Frequency coded threshold logic unit for pattern recognition application

Frequency coded threshold logic unit for pattern recognition systems based on central nervous syste