Optimizing Support Vector Machine Performance for Parkinson's Disease Diagnosis Using GridSearchCV and PCA-Based Feature Extraction

Abstract

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a critical neurodegenerative disorder affecting the central nervous system and often causing impaired movement and cognitive function in patients. In addition, its diagnosis in the early stages requires a complex and time-consuming process because all existing tests such as electroencephalography or blood examinations lack effectiveness and accuracy. Several studies explored PD prediction using sound, with a specific focus on the development of classification models to enhance accuracy. The majority of these neglected crucial aspects including feature extraction and proper parameter tuning, leading to low accuracy. Objective: This study aims to optimize performance of voice-based PD prediction through feature extraction, with the goal of reducing data dimensions and improving model computational efficiency. Additionally, appropriate parameters will be selected for enhancement of the ability of the model to identify both PD cases and healthy individuals. Methods: The proposed new model applied an OpenML dataset comprising voice recordings from 31 individuals, namely 23 PD patients and 8 healthy participants. The experimental process included the initial use of the SVM algorithm, followed by implementing PCA for feature extraction to enhance machine learning accuracy. Subsequently, data balancing with SMOTE was conducted, and GridSearchCV was used to identify the best parameter combination based on the predicted model characteristics. Result: Evaluation of the proposed model showed an impressive accuracy of 97.44%, sensitivity of 100%, and specificity of 85.71%. This excellent result was achieved with a limited dataset and a 10-fold cross-validation tuning, rendering the model sensitive to the training data. Conclusion: This study successfully enhanced the prediction model accuracy through the SVM+PCA+GridSearchCV+CV method. However, future investigations should consider an appropriate number of folds for a small dataset, explore alternative cross-validation methods, and expand the dataset to enhance model generalizability.