Using global optimization to improve classification for medical diagnosis and prognosis.

Global optimization-based techniques are studied in order to increase the accuracy of medical diagnosis and prognosis with data from various databases. First, we discuss feature selection, the problem of determining the most informative features for classification in the databases under consideration. Then, we apply a technique based on convex and global optimization for classification in these databases. The third application of this technique is a method that calculates centers of clusters to predict when breast cancer is likely to recur in patients for which cancer has been removed. The technique achieves high accuracy with these databases. Better classifiers will lead to improved assistance in making medical diagnostic and prognostic decisions.