Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies

A special issue of Algorithms (ISSN 1999-4893). This special issue belongs to the section "Evolutionary Algorithms and Machine Learning".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2019) | Viewed by 36687

Special Issue Editors

Department of Engineering, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Interests: fuzzy control; intelligent systems; computational intelligence; machine learning; deep learning; reinforcement learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Health technology research brings together complementary interdisciplinary research skills in the development of innovative health technology applications. Recent research indicates that artificial intelligence can help achieve outstanding performance for particular types of health technology applications. Evolutionary algorithms is one of the subfields of artificial intelligence, and is an effective algorithm for global optimization inspired by biological evolution. With the rapidly growing complexity of design issues, methodologies and more demanding quality of health technology applications, the development of evolutionary computation algorithms for health has become timely and of high relevance. This Special Issue intends to bring together researchers to report the recent findings in evolutionary algorithms in health technology.

The main topics of interest in this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:
  • information fusion and knowledge transfer in biomedical and health technology applications
  • Big data analytics on biomedical engineering
  • medical imaging
  • RNA structure prediction
  • cell sequencing analysis
  • analysis of medical data
  • advanced modelling, diagnosis and treatment using evolutionary computation

Dr. Steve Ling
Dr. Hak Keung Lam
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 149 KiB  
Editorial
Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies
by Sai Ho Ling and Hak Keung Lam
Algorithms 2019, 12(10), 202; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12100202 - 24 Sep 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2948
Abstract
Health technology research brings together complementary interdisciplinary research skills in the development of innovative health technology applications. Recent research indicates that artificial intelligence can help achieve outstanding performance for particular types of health technology applications. An evolutionary algorithm is one of the subfields [...] Read more.
Health technology research brings together complementary interdisciplinary research skills in the development of innovative health technology applications. Recent research indicates that artificial intelligence can help achieve outstanding performance for particular types of health technology applications. An evolutionary algorithm is one of the subfields of artificial intelligence, and is an effective algorithm for global optimization inspired by biological evolution. With the rapidly growing complexity of design issues, methodologies and a higher demand for quality health technology applications, the development of evolutionary computation algorithms for health has become timely and of high relevance. This Special Issue intends to bring together researchers to report the recent findings in evolutionary algorithms in health technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)

Research

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25 pages, 4158 KiB  
Article
A Novel Virtual Sample Generation Method to Overcome the Small Sample Size Problem in Computer Aided Medical Diagnosing
by Mohammad Wedyan, Alessandro Crippa and Adel Al-Jumaily
Algorithms 2019, 12(8), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12080160 - 09 Aug 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4616
Abstract
Deep neural networks are successful learning tools for building nonlinear models. However, a robust deep learning-based classification model needs a large dataset. Indeed, these models are often unstable when they use small datasets. To solve this issue, which is particularly critical in light [...] Read more.
Deep neural networks are successful learning tools for building nonlinear models. However, a robust deep learning-based classification model needs a large dataset. Indeed, these models are often unstable when they use small datasets. To solve this issue, which is particularly critical in light of the possible clinical applications of these predictive models, researchers have developed approaches such as virtual sample generation. Virtual sample generation significantly improves learning and classification performance when working with small samples. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of the proposed virtual sample generation to overcome the small sample size problem, which is a feature of the automated detection of a neurodevelopmental disorder, namely autism spectrum disorder. Results show that our method enhances diagnostic accuracy from 84%–95% using virtual samples generated on the basis of five actual clinical samples. The present findings show the feasibility of using the proposed technique to improve classification performance even in cases of clinical samples of limited size. Accounting for concerns in relation to small sample sizes, our technique represents a meaningful step forward in terms of pattern recognition methodology, particularly when it is applied to diagnostic classifications of neurodevelopmental disorders. Besides, the proposed technique has been tested with other available benchmark datasets. The experimental outcomes showed that the accuracy of the classification that used virtual samples was superior to the one that used original training data without virtual samples. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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25 pages, 1057 KiB  
Article
Bicriteria Vehicle Routing Problem with Preferences and Timing Constraints in Home Health Care Services
by Syrine Roufaida Ait Haddadene, Nacima Labadie and Caroline Prodhon
Algorithms 2019, 12(8), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12080152 - 30 Jul 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4400
Abstract
Home Healthcare (HHC) is an emerging and fast-expanding service sector that gives rise to challenging vehicle routing and scheduling problems. Each day, HHC structures must schedule the visits of caregivers to patients requiring specific medical and paramedical services at home. These operations have [...] Read more.
Home Healthcare (HHC) is an emerging and fast-expanding service sector that gives rise to challenging vehicle routing and scheduling problems. Each day, HHC structures must schedule the visits of caregivers to patients requiring specific medical and paramedical services at home. These operations have the potential to be unsuitable if the visits are not planned correctly, leading hence to high logistics costs and/or deteriorated service level. In this article, this issue is modeled as a vehicle routing problem where a set of routes has to be built to visit patients asking for one or more specific service within a given time window and during a fixed service time. Each patient has a preference value associated with each available caregiver. The problem addressed in this paper considers two objectives to optimize simultaneously: minimize the caregivers’ travel costs and maximize the patients’ preferences. In this paper, different methods based on the bi-objective non-dominated sorting algorithm are proposed to solve the vehicle routing problem with time windows, preferences, and timing constraints. Numerical results are presented for instances with up to 73 clients. Metrics such as the distance measure, hyper-volume, and the number of non-dominated solutions in the Pareto front are used to assess the quality of the proposed approaches. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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12 pages, 3485 KiB  
Article
Deep Learning with a Recurrent Network Structure in the Sequence Modeling of Imbalanced Data for ECG-Rhythm Classifier
by Annisa Darmawahyuni, Siti Nurmaini, Sukemi, Wahyu Caesarendra, Vicko Bhayyu, M Naufal Rachmatullah and Firdaus
Algorithms 2019, 12(6), 118; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12060118 - 07 Jun 2019
Cited by 47 | Viewed by 5885
Abstract
The interpretation of Myocardial Infarction (MI) via electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is a challenging task. ECG signals’ morphological view show significant variation in different patients under different physical conditions. Several learning algorithms have been studied to interpret MI. However, the drawback of machine learning [...] Read more.
The interpretation of Myocardial Infarction (MI) via electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is a challenging task. ECG signals’ morphological view show significant variation in different patients under different physical conditions. Several learning algorithms have been studied to interpret MI. However, the drawback of machine learning is the use of heuristic features with shallow feature learning architectures. To overcome this problem, a deep learning approach is used for learning features automatically, without conventional handcrafted features. This paper presents sequence modeling based on deep learning with recurrent network for ECG-rhythm signal classification. The recurrent network architecture such as a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is proposed to automatically interpret MI via ECG signal. The performance of the proposed method is compared to the other recurrent network classifiers such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU). The objective is to obtain the best sequence model for ECG signal processing. This paper also aims to study a proper data partitioning ratio for the training and testing sets of imbalanced data. The large imbalanced data are obtained from MI and healthy control of PhysioNet: The PTB Diagnostic ECG Database 15-lead ECG signals. According to the comparison result, the LSTM architecture shows better performance than standard RNN and GRU architecture with identical hyper-parameters. The LSTM architecture also shows better classification compared to standard recurrent networks and GRU with sensitivity, specificity, precision, F1-score, BACC, and MCC is 98.49%, 97.97%, 95.67%, 96.32%, 97.56%, and 95.32%, respectively. Apparently, deep learning with the LSTM technique is a potential method for classifying sequential data that implements time steps in the ECG signal. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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13 pages, 1409 KiB  
Article
Evolutionary Machine Learning for Multi-Objective Class Solutions in Medical Deformable Image Registration
by Kleopatra Pirpinia, Peter A. N. Bosman, Jan-Jakob Sonke, Marcel van Herk and Tanja Alderliesten
Algorithms 2019, 12(5), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12050099 - 09 May 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4034
Abstract
Current state-of-the-art medical deformable image registration (DIR) methods optimize a weighted sum of key objectives of interest. Having a pre-determined weight combination that leads to high-quality results for any instance of a specific DIR problem (i.e., a class solution) would facilitate clinical application [...] Read more.
Current state-of-the-art medical deformable image registration (DIR) methods optimize a weighted sum of key objectives of interest. Having a pre-determined weight combination that leads to high-quality results for any instance of a specific DIR problem (i.e., a class solution) would facilitate clinical application of DIR. However, such a combination can vary widely for each instance and is currently often manually determined. A multi-objective optimization approach for DIR removes the need for manual tuning, providing a set of high-quality trade-off solutions. Here, we investigate machine learning for a multi-objective class solution, i.e., not a single weight combination, but a set thereof, that, when used on any instance of a specific DIR problem, approximates such a set of trade-off solutions. To this end, we employed a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to learn sets of weight combinations for three breast DIR problems of increasing difficulty: 10 prone-prone cases, 4 prone-supine cases with limited deformations and 6 prone-supine cases with larger deformations and image artefacts. Clinically-acceptable results were obtained for the first two problems. Therefore, for DIR problems with limited deformations, a multi-objective class solution can be machine learned and used to compute straightforwardly multiple high-quality DIR outcomes, potentially leading to more efficient use of DIR in clinical practice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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35 pages, 12141 KiB  
Article
Optimal Design of Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Heart Rate Level Classification Systems Using the Bird Swarm Algorithm
by Ivette Miramontes, Juan Carlos Guzman, Patricia Melin and German Prado-Arechiga
Algorithms 2018, 11(12), 206; https://doi.org/10.3390/a11120206 - 14 Dec 2018
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 4146
Abstract
In this paper, the optimal designs of type-1 and interval type-2 fuzzy systems for the classification of the heart rate level are presented. The contribution of this work is a proposed approach for achieving the optimal design of interval type-2 fuzzy systems for [...] Read more.
In this paper, the optimal designs of type-1 and interval type-2 fuzzy systems for the classification of the heart rate level are presented. The contribution of this work is a proposed approach for achieving the optimal design of interval type-2 fuzzy systems for the classification of the heart rate in patients. The fuzzy rule base was designed based on the knowledge of experts. Optimization of the membership functions of the fuzzy systems is done in order to improve the classification rate and provide a more accurate diagnosis, and for this goal the Bird Swarm Algorithm was used. Two different type-1 fuzzy systems are designed and optimized, the first one with trapezoidal membership functions and the second with Gaussian membership functions. Once the best type-1 fuzzy systems have been obtained, these are considered as a basis for designing the interval type-2 fuzzy systems, where the footprint of uncertainty was optimized to find the optimal representation of uncertainty. After performing different tests with patients and comparing the classification rate of each fuzzy system, it is concluded that fuzzy systems with Gaussian membership functions provide a better classification than those designed with trapezoidal membership functions. Additionally, tests were performed with the Crow Search Algorithm to carry out a performance comparison, with Bird Swarm Algorithm being the one with the best results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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Review

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18 pages, 261 KiB  
Review
Review on Electrical Impedance Tomography: Artificial Intelligence Methods and its Applications
by Talha Ali Khan and Sai Ho Ling
Algorithms 2019, 12(5), 88; https://doi.org/10.3390/a12050088 - 26 Apr 2019
Cited by 81 | Viewed by 9784
Abstract
Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has been a hot topic among researchers for the last 30 years. It is a new imaging method and has evolved over the last few decades. By injecting a small amount of current, the electrical properties of tissues are [...] Read more.
Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has been a hot topic among researchers for the last 30 years. It is a new imaging method and has evolved over the last few decades. By injecting a small amount of current, the electrical properties of tissues are determined and measurements of the resulting voltages are taken. By using a reconstructing algorithm these voltages then transformed into a tomographic image. EIT contains no identified threats and as compared to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans (imaging techniques), it is cheaper in cost as well. In this paper, a comprehensive review of efforts and advancements undertaken and achieved in recent work to improve this technology and the role of artificial intelligence to solve this non-linear, ill-posed problem are presented. In addition, a review of EIT clinical based applications has also been presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evolutionary Algorithms in Health Technologies)
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