An intelligent clinical decision support system for patient-specific predictions to improve cervical intraepithelial neoplasia detection
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Nowadays, there are molecular biology techniques providing information related to cervical cancer and its cause: the human Papillomavirus (HPV), including DNA microarrays identifying HPV subtypes, mRNA techniques such as nucleic acid based amplification or flow cytometry identifying E6/E7 oncogenes, and immunocytochemistry techniques such as overexpression of p16. Each one of these techniques has its own performance, limitations and advantages, thus a combinatorial approach via computational intelligence methods could exploit the benefits of each method and produce more accurate results. In this article we propose a clinical decision support system (CDSS), composed by artificial neural networks, intelligently combining the results of classic and ancillary techniques for diagnostic accuracy improvement. We evaluated this method on 740 cases with complete series of cytological assessment, molecular tests, and colposcopy examination. The CDSS demonstrated high sensitivity (89.4%), high specificity (97.1%), high positive predictive value (89.4%), and high negative predictive value (97.1%), for detecting cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or worse (CIN2+). In comparison to the tests involved in this study and their combinations, the CDSS produced the most balanced results in terms of sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV. The proposed system may reduce the referral rate for colposcopy and guide personalised management and therapeutic interventions.
Date Issued
2014-04-09
Date Acceptance
2014-03-16
Citation
Biomed Research International, 2014, 2014
ISSN
2314-6133
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Journal / Book Title
Biomed Research International
Volume
2014
Copyright Statement
© 2014 Panagiotis Bountris et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
341483
Date Publish Online
2014-04-09