A similarity based learning framework for interim analysis of outcome prediction of acupuncture for neck pain
by Gang Zhang; Zhaohui Liang; Jian Yin; Wenbin Fu; Guo-Zheng Li
International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics (IJDMB), Vol. 8, No. 4, 2013

Abstract: Chronic neck pain is a common morbid disorder in modern society. Acupuncture has been administered for treating chronic pain as an alternative therapy for a long time, with its effectiveness supported by the latest clinical evidence. However, the potential effective difference in different syndrome types is questioned due to the limits of sample size and statistical methods. We applied machine learning methods in an attempt to solve this problem. Through a multi-objective sorting of subjective measurements, outstanding samples are selected to form the base of our kernel-oriented model. With calculation of similarities between the concerned sample and base samples, we are able to make full use of information contained in the known samples, which is especially effective in the case of a small sample set. To tackle the parameters selection problem in similarity learning, we propose an ensemble version of slightly different parameter setting to obtain stronger learning. The experimental result on a real data set shows that compared to some previous well-known methods, the proposed algorithm is capable of discovering the underlying difference among different syndrome types and is feasible for predicting the effective tendency in clinical trials of large samples.

Online publication date: Mon, 20-Oct-2014

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics (IJDMB):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com