Applying particle swarm optimization-based decision tree classifier for wart treatment selection

Abstract

AbstractWart is a disease caused by human papillomavirus with common and plantar warts as general forms. Commonly used methods to treat warts are immunotherapy and cryotherapy. The selection of proper treatment is vital to cure warts. This paper establishes a classification and regression tree (CART) model based on particle swarm optimisation to help patients choose between immunotherapy and cryotherapy. The proposed model can accurately predict the response of patients to the two methods. Using an improved particle swarm algorithm (PSO) to optimise the parameters of the model instead of the traditional pruning algorithm, a more concise and more accurate model is obtained. Two experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed model. On the hand, five benchmarks are used to verify the performance of the improved PSO algorithm. On the other hand, the experiment on two wart datasets is conducted. Results show that the proposed model is effective. The proposed method classifies better than k-nearest neighbour, C4.5 and logistic regression. It also performs better than the conventional optimisation method for the CART algorithm. Moreover, the decision tree model established in this study is interpretable and understandable. Therefore, the proposed model can help patients and doctors reduce the medical cost and improve the quality of healing operation.