Estimation of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) disease using clinical information based on the optimal combination of intelligent algorithms for feature selection and classification

The early diagnosis of NASH disease can decrease the risk of proceeding elements and treatment costs for patients. This study aims to present an optimal combination of intelligent algorithms using advanced machine learning methods, including different feature selections and classifications based on clinical data and blood factors. In this work, collected data were from 176 patients to investigate NASH disease, and 19 features were extracted. We then sought to find the best combination of features based on different feature selection algorithms such as Feature Forward Selection (FFS), Minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (MRMR), and Mutual Information (MI). Finally, we used nine classifier frameworks with different mathematical mechanisms, including random forest (RF), logistic regression (LR), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), AdaBoost, K nearest neighbors (KNN), multilayer perceptron model (MLP), support vector machine (SVM), and decision tree (DT) to estimate NASH disease. Our investigation revealed that the combination of dominant features, namely body mass index (BMI), glutamic pyruvic transaminase (GPT), total cholesterol (TC), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), Ezetimibe, lipoprotein level Lp(a), Loge(Lp(a)), total triglyceride (TG), Creatinine (Cre), HbA1c, Fibrate, and Sex, selected by the MRMR algorithm and classified by the RF method can provide the most appropriate performance based on less computation effort and maximum performance with accuracy, AUC, precision, and recall indices, which are 81.51±9.35, 82.53±11.24, 85.28±9.68, and 89.49±7.92, respectively. This study investigated the configuration of feature selection and classifier that is most suitable for classifying NASH disease based on clinical data and blood factors. The proposed intelligent algorithm based on MRMR and RF classifier can automatically diagnose NASH disease with appropriate performance and present an initial report without any further invasive methods. It also clarifies the diagnostic process and, as a result, the continuation of their prevention and treatment cycle.