Showing results for Machine Learning

An early prediction model for canine chronic kidney disease based on routine clinical laboratory tests

The aim of this study was to derive a model to predict the risk of dogs developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) using data from electronic health records (EHR) collected during routine veterinary practice. Data from 57,402 dogs were included in the study. Two thirds of the EHRs were used to build the model, which included feature selection and identification of the optimal neural network type and architecture. The remaining unseen EHRs were used to evaluate model performance. The final model was a recurrent neural network with 6 features (creatinine, blood urea nitrogen, urine specific gravity, urine protein, weight, age). Identifying CKD at the time of diagnosis, the model displayed a sensitivity of 91.4% and a specificity of 97.2%. When predicting future risk of CKD, model sensitivity was 68.8% at 1 year, and 44.8% 2 years before diagnosis. Positive predictive value (PPV)…

Using word embeddings to learn a better food ontology

Food ontologies require significant effort to create and maintain as they involve manual and time-consuming tasks, often with limited alignment to the underlying food science knowledge. We propose a semi-supervised framework for the automated ontology population from an existing ontology scaffold by using word embeddings. Having applied this on the domain of food and subsequent evaluation against an expert-curated ontology, FoodOn, we observe that the food word embeddings capture the latent relationships and characteristics of foods. The resulting ontology, which utilizes word embeddings trained from the Wikipedia corpus, has an improvement of 89.7% in precision when compared to the expert-curated ontology FoodOn (0.34 vs. 0.18, respectively, p value = 2.6 × 10–138), and it has a 43.6% shorter path distance (hops) between predicted and actual food instances (2.91 vs. 5.16, respectively, p value = 4.7 × 10–84) when compared to other methods.

Accelerated knowledge discovery from omics data by optimal experimental design

How to design experiments that accelerate knowledge discovery on complex biological landscapes remains a tantalizing question. We present an optimal experimental design method (coined OPEX) to identify informative omics experiments using machine learning models for both experimental space exploration and model training. OPEX-guided exploration of Escherichia coli’s populations exposed to biocide and antibiotic combinations lead to more accurate predictive models of gene expression with 44% less data. Analysis of the proposed experiments shows that broad exploration of the experimental space followed by fine-tuning emerges as the optimal strategy. Additionally, analysis of the experimental data reveals 29 cases of cross-stress protection and 4 cases of cross-stress vulnerability. Further validation reveals the central role of chaperones, stress response proteins and transport pumps in cross-stress exposure. This work demonstrates how active learning can be used to guide omics..

The computational diet: A review of computational methods across diet, microbiome, and health

Food and human health are inextricably linked. As such, revolutionary impacts on health have been derived from advances in the production and distribution of food relating to food safety and fortification with micronutrients. During the past two decades, it has become apparent that the human microbiome has the potential to modulate health, including in ways that may be related to diet and the composition of specific foods. Despite the excitement and potential surrounding this area, the complexity of the gut microbiome, the chemical composition of food, and their interplay in situ remains a daunting task to fully understand. However, recent advances in high-throughput sequencing, metabolomics profiling, compositional analysis of food, and the emergence of electronic health records provide new sources of data that can contribute to addressing this challenge. Computational science will play an essential role in this effort as it will provide the foundation to integrate these data layers and derive insights capable of revealing and understanding the complex interactions between diet, gut microbiome, and health.

Predicting early risk of chronic kidney disease in cats using routine clinical laboratory tests and machine learning

Background: Advanced machine learning methods combined with large sets of health screening data provide opportunities for diagnostic value in human and veterinary medicine.
Hypothesis/Objectives: To derive a model to predict the risk of cats developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) using data from electronic health records (EHRs) collected during routine veterinary practice.
Animals: A total of 106 251 cats that attended Banfield Pet Hospitals between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 2017.
Methods: Longitudinal EHRs from Banfield Pet Hospitals were extracted and randomly split into 2 parts. The first 67% of the data were used to build a prediction model, which included feature selection and identification of the optimal neural network type and architecture. The remaining unseen EHRs were used to evaluate the model performance.

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