An Artificial Neural Network Approach and a Data Augmentation Algorithm to Systematize the Diagnosis of Deep-Vein Thrombosis by Using Wells’ Criteria

The use of a back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN) to systematize the reliability of a Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) diagnostic by using Wells’ criteria is introduced herein. In this paper, a new ANN model is proposed to improve the Accuracy when dealing with a highly unbalanced dataset. To create the training dataset, a new data augmentation algorithm based on statistical data known as the prevalence of DVT of real cases reported in literature and from the public hospital is proposed. The above is used to generate one dataset of 10,000 synthetic cases. Each synthetic case has nine risk factors according to Wells’ criteria and also the use of two additional factors, such as gender and age, is proposed. According to interviews with medical specialists, a training scheme was established. In addition, a new algorithm is presented to improve the Accuracy and Sensitivity/Recall. According to the proposed algorithm, two thresholds of decision were found, the first one is 0.484, which is to improve Accuracy. The other one is 0.138 to improve Sensitivity/Recall. The Accuracy achieved is 90.99%, which is greater than that obtained with other related machine learning methods. The proposed ANN model was validated performing the k-fold cross validation technique using a dataset with 10,000 synthetic cases. The test was performed by using 59 real cases obtained from a regional hospital, achieving an Accuracy of 98.30%.