title: CLINICAL/MEDICAL OUTCOME PREDICTION BY NEURAL NETWORKS WITH STATISTICAL ENHANCEMENT.
abstract: Neural networks offer a powerful new approach to information processing through their ability to generalize from a specific training data set. The success of this approach has raised interesting new possibilities of incorporating statistical methodology in order to enhance their predictive ability. This paper reports on two complementary methods of prediction. one using neural networks and the other using traditional statistical methods. The two methods are compared on the basis of their prediction applied to standardized developmental infant outcome measures using preselected infant and maternal variables measured at birth. Three neural network algorithms were employed. In our study, no one network outperformed the other two consistently. The neural networks provided significantly better results than the regression model in terms of variation and prediction of extreme outcomes. Finally we demonstrated that selection of relevant input variables through statistical means can produce a reduced network structure with no loss in predictive ability.
authors: Departments of Pediatrics and Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Case Westem Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A. tsy@po.cwru.edu.
authors: Toyoko S
authors: TS
authors: Yamashita
authors: Biostatistics Unit, University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 U.S.A. nuamah@a1.mscf.upenn.edu.
authors: Isaac F
authors: IF
authors: Nuamah
authors: Departments of Electrical Engineering and Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A.
authors: Philip A
authors: PA
authors: Dorsey
authors: Department of Electrical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A.
authors: Seyed M
authors: SM
authors: Hosseini-Nezhad
authors: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A. rab@hal.cwru.edu.
authors: Roger A
authors: RA
authors: Bielefeld
authors: Department of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A.
authors: Edward F
authors: EF
authors: Kerekes
authors: Department of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 U.S.A.
authors: Lynn T
authors: LT
authors: Singer
keywords: feed forward MLP; flat net; functional link net (FLN); regression