Assessment of diagnostic features in the coronary artery disease (CAD) by application of statistical methods and neural networks

The present work is aimed at comparing the effectiveness of two different methods of risk factor assessment used for prediction of the CAD (coronary artery disease): the logistic regression method and the application of artificial neural networks. The former is widely used in medical research, while the latter is relatively rare. In the logistic regression method hierarchical analysis was employed to select the significant variables of the classification process. In the neural network approach several strategies were proposed for selection of the discriminative variables, all based on weight analysis in the constructed networks. Both methods have produced a consistent set of discriminative variables (Glu0, Ins0, Ins30, BMI, apoA1 and HDL-Ch), belonging to three groups of risk factors associated with insulin resistance, obesity and lipid disorders.