A novel multisolutional clustering and quantization (MCO) algorithm has been developed
that provides a flexible way to preprocess data. It was tested whether it would impact
the neural network’s performance favorably and whether the employment of the proposed
algorithm would enable neural networks to handle missing data. This was assessed by
comparing the performance of neural networks using a well-documented data set to predict
outcome following liver transplantation. This new approach to data preprocessing leads
to a statistically significant improvement in network performance when compared to
simple linear scaling. The obtained results also showed that coding missing data as
zeroes in combination with the MCO algorithm, leads to a significant improvement in
neural network performance on a data set containing missing values in 59.4% of cases
when compared to replacement of missing values with either series means or medians.
Keywords
Neural Network - Algorithms - Cluster Analysis - Missing Data - Liver Transplantation