Osteoporosis Detection Using Machine Learning Techniques and Feature Selection

Osteoporosis is a disease of bones that leads to an increased risk of fracture and it is characterized by low bone mineral density and micro-architectural deterioration of bone tissue. In this article, the dataset consists of 3426 subjects (1083 pathological and 2343 healthy cases) whose diagnosis was based on laboratory and osteal bone densitometry examination. In all cases, four diagnostic factors for osteoporosis risk prediction, namely age, sex, height and weight were stored for later evaluation with the selected classifiers. In order to categorize subjects into two classes (osteoporosis, non-osteoporosis), twenty machine learning techniques were assessed, based on their popularity and frequency in biomedical engineering problems. All classifiers have been evaluated using the well-known 10-fold cross validation method and the results are reported analytically. In addition, a feature selection method identified that with the use of only two diagnostic factors (age and weight), similar performance could be achieved. The scope of the proposed exhaustive methodology is to assist therapists in osteoporosis prediction, avoiding unnecessary further testing with bone densitometry.