Bayesian model combination and its application to cervical cancer detection

Abstract

We have developed a novel methodology to combine several models using a Bayesian approach. The method selects the most relevant attributes from several models, and produces a Bayesian classifier which has a higher classification rate than any of them, and at the same time is very efficient. Based on conditional information measures, the method eliminates irrelevant variables, and joins or eliminates dependent variables; until an optimal Bayesian classifier is obtained. We have applied this method for diagnosis of precursor lesions of cervical cancer. The temporal evolution of the color changes in a sequence of colposcopy images is analyzed, and the resulting curve is fit to an approximate model. In previous work we develop 3 different mathematical models to describe the temporal evolution of each image region, and based on each model to detect regions that could have cancer. In this paper we combine the three models using our methodology and show very high accurracy for cancer detection, superior to any of the 3 original models. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.