An improved AdaBoost algorithm for identification of lung cancer based on electronic nose.

The research developed an improved intelligent enhancement learning algorithm based on AdaBoost, that can be applied for lung cancer breath detection by the electronic nose (eNose). First, collected the breath signals from volunteers by eNose, including healthy individuals and people who had lung cancer. Additionally, the signals' features were extracted and optimized. Then, multi sub-classifiers were obtained, and their coefficients were derived from the training error. To improve generalization performance, K-fold cross-validation was used when constructing each sub-classifier. The prediction results of a sub-classifier on the test set were then achieved by the voting method. Thus, an improved AdaBoost classifier would be built through heterogeneous integration. The results shows that the average precision of the improved algorithm classifier for distinguishing between people with lung cancer and healthy individuals could reach 98.47%, with 98.33% sensitivity and 97% specificity. And in 100 independent and randomized tests, the coefficient of variation of the classifier's performance hardly exceeded 4%. Compared with other integrated algorithms, the generalization and stability of the improved algorithm classifier are more superior. It is clear that the improved AdaBoost algorithm may help screen out lung cancer more comprehensively. Additionally, it will significantly advance the use of eNose in the early identification of lung cancer.