Predicting UPDRS in Parkinson’s disease using ensembles of self-organizing map and neuro-fuzzy

Abstract

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a complex, degenerative disease that affects nerve cells that are responsible for body movement. Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms are widely used to diagnose and track the progression of this disease, which causes symptoms of Parkinson's disease in its early stages, by predicting the results of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). In this study, we aim to develop a method based on the integration of two methods, one complementary to the other, Ensembles of Self-Organizing Map and Neuro-Fuzzy, and an unsupervised learning algorithm. The proposed method relied on the higher effect of the variables resulting from the analysis of the initial readings to obtain a correct and accurate preliminary prediction. We evaluate the developed approach on a PD dataset including speech cues. The process was evaluated with root mean square error (RMSE) and modified R square (modified R2). Our findings reveal that the proposed method is effective in predicting UPDRS outcomes by a combination of speech signals (measures of hoarseness). As the preliminary results during the evaluation showed numbers that proved the worth of the proposed method, such as UPDRS = 0.955 and RMSE approximately 0.2769 during the prediction process.