Automated classification of choroidal neovascularization, diabetic macular edema, and drusen from retinal OCT images using vision transformers: a comparative study.

Classifying retinal diseases is a complex problem because the early problematic areas of retinal disorders are quite small and conservative. In recent years, Transformer architectures have been successfully applied to solve various retinal related health problems. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME), two prevalent retinal diseases, can cause partial or total blindness. Diseases therefore require an early and accurate detection. In this study, we proposed Vision Transformer (ViT), Tokens-To-Token Vision Transformer (T2T-ViT) and Mobile Vision Transformer (Mobile-ViT) algorithms to detect choroidal neovascularization (CNV), drusen, and diabetic macular edema (DME), and normal using optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. The predictive accuracies of ViT, T2T-ViT and Mobile-ViT achieved on the dataset for the classification of OCT images are 95.14%, 96.07% and 99.17% respectively. Experimental results obtained from ViT approaches showed that Mobile-ViT have superior performance with regard to classification accuracy in comparison with the others. Overall, it has been observed that ViT architectures have the capacity to classify with high accuracy in the diagnosis of retinal diseases.

Meta-heuristic optimization algorithms based feature selection for joint moment prediction of sit-to-stand movement using machine learning algorithms.

The sit-to-stand (STS) movement is fundamental in daily activities, involving coordinated motion of the lower extremities and trunk, which leads to the generation of joint moments based on joint angles and limb properties. Traditional methods for determining joint moments often involve sensors or complex mathematical approaches, posing limitations in terms of movement restrictions or expertise requirements. Machine learning (ML) algorithms have emerged as promising tools for joint moment estimation, but the challenge lies in efficiently selecting relevant features from diverse datasets, especially in clinical research settings. This study aims to address this challenge by leveraging metaheuristic optimization algorithms to predict joint moments during STS using minimal input data. Motion analysis data from 20 participants with varied mass and inertia properties are utilized, and joint angles are computed alongside simulations of joint moments. Feature selection is performed using the Manta Ray Foraging Optimization (MRFO), Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA), and Equilibrium Optimizer (EO) algorithms. Subsequently, Decision Tree Regression (DTR), Random Forest Regression (RFR), Extra Tree Regression (ETR), and eXtreme Gradient Boosting Regression (XGBoost Regression) ML algorithms are deployed for joint moment prediction. The results reveal EO-ETR as the most effective algorithm for ankle, knee, and neck joint moment prediction, while MPA-ETR exhibits superior performance for hip joint prediction. This approach demonstrates potential for enhancing accuracy in joint moment estimation with minimal feature input, offering implications for biomechanical research and clinical applications.

A comparative analysis of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms for feature selection on ML-based classification of heart-related diseases.

This study aims to use a machine learning (ML)-based enhanced diagnosis and survival model to predict heart disease and survival in heart failure by combining the cuckoo search (CS), flower pollination algorithm (FPA), whale optimization algorithm (WOA), and Harris hawks optimization (HHO) algorithms, which are meta-heuristic feature selection algorithms. To achieve this, experiments are conducted on the Cleveland heart disease dataset and the heart failure dataset collected from the Faisalabad Institute of Cardiology published at UCI. CS, FPA, WOA, and HHO algorithms for feature selection are applied for different population sizes and are realized based on the best fitness values. For the original dataset of heart disease, the maximum prediction F-score of 88% is obtained using K-nearest neighbour (KNN) when compared to logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB), and random forest (RF). With the proposed approach, the heart disease prediction F-score of 99.72% is obtained using KNN for population sizes 60 with FPA by selecting eight features. For the original dataset of heart failure, the maximum prediction F-score of 70% is obtained using LR and RF compared to SVM, GNB, and KNN. With the proposed approach, the heart failure prediction F-score of 97.45% is obtained using KNN for population sizes 10 with HHO by selecting five features. Experimental findings show that the applied meta-heuristic algorithms with ML algorithms significantly improve prediction performances compared to performances obtained from the original datasets. The motivation of this paper is to select the most critical and informative feature subset through meta-heuristic algorithms to improve classification accuracy.