Implementation of Fuzzy Logic Approach For Thalassemia Screening in Children
Implementation of Fuzzy Logic Approach For Thalassemia Screening in Children
Corresponding Author:
Admi Syarif
Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Lampung University
St. Prof. Dr. Sumantri Brojonegoro No.1, Bandar Lampung, Lampung 35145, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
1. INTRODUCTION
Blood disorders are known to require very expensive medical expenses. Some blood disorders, such
as thalassemia, hemophilia, blood clots, blood cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, require a lot of
money. Diagnosing thalassemia is a challenging task. In addition to cancer, it is considered one of the most
dangerous diseases in the world [1]. Thalassemia is one type of blood disorder due to genetic characteristics
derived from both parents [2], [3]. Another possibility that it can cause is when a gene mutation occurs [4].
This disease is commonly known from infancy [5], [6]. In some cases, thalassemia is discovered after a
person grows up [4]. When treatment is given late, the disease can cause growth delays in the child and other
complications. Thalassemia is also divided into two categories: transfusion-dependent and nontransfusion-
dependent [7]. The easiest way to perform a blood transfusion is by knowing the hemoglobin levels in the
blood [7], [8]. If it is below the standard value, a blood transfusion should be initiated immediately.
Thalassemia patients often experience anemia which can cause fatigue, weakness, and difficulty in
performing physical activity. They may also experience delayed growth and abnormal bone development.
Most of these cases are found in children over the age of two years. Thalassemia detection can be done
through a blood test in a laboratory, commonly called screening. Thalassemia screening has several
components of blood tests, including complete blood count (CBC) and high-performance liquid
chromatography (HPLC) [9], [10]. Doctors usually use CBC to predict a blood disorder [11], [12]. Some of
the CBC components that have been used include hemoglobin (HGB), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), and
mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) [13]. We found the problem that HPLC inspection is expensive, and
the consumption time is prolonged [10], [14], [15]. Thus, our study aims to use a new fuzzy-based approach
to minimize costs and accelerate the screening time for thalassemia.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the fields of computer science that is constantly developing and
widely applied in various fields [16]. In multiple studies, AI has been widely used to solve problems related
to medicine, agriculture, and business [17], [18]. It is also used to predict the presence of blood disorders
[18], [19]. A significant problem in AI applications is dealing with non-deterministic data or information.
One popular approach to this issue is to adopt a fuzzy approach. Since Zadeh [20] introduced it, fuzzy has
been widely used for various applications to solve various problems of disease in humans [21], animals [22],
and also plants [23]. A fuzzy approach to predicting thalassemia in children can overcome several challenges
[24]. Fuzzy logic can help analyze interpretations that are incomplete, ambiguous, or subject to interpretation.
This problem makes them suitable for dealing with thalassemia’s complex and diverse clinical picture. The
proposed method uses a fuzzy approach to provide a more accurate and efficient method for predicting
thalassemia in children.
Thalassemia is very important to study and many studies on the use of AI for thalassemia problems
have been conducted. The use of AI has addressed a number of challenges associated with thalassemia. We
have summarized some AI approaches to solve some problems in thalassemia presented in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that various thalassemia problems worked a lot with AI. Some studies on AI with
fuzzy logical approaches have excellent prediction accuracy [23], [26], [27]. Therefore, we use this approach
to solve problems in thalassemia. This article aims to predict blood disorder in a child, focusing on
thalassemia with a fuzzy approach. Our systems require data from laboratory tests such as CBC and
peripheral blood smear (PBS). Thalassemia, referred to in this article, is a beta (β) type. This type of
Thalassemia is most common in Indonesia and other Asian countries. This article perfected previous research
on classifying Thalassemia [11], [28] by adding PBS as a new parameter.
This article consists of two stages. First, the system detects blood disorders by analyzing CBC
laboratory results containing HGB, MCV, and MCH. Second, the CBC analysis results that detect blood
abnormalities are then matched with expert knowledge of thalassemia symptoms on PBS. Our system will
provide a prediction of the patient’s condition based on the analysis performed using CBC and PBS data.
Implementation of fuzzy logic approach for thalassemia screening in children (Erliyan Redy Susanto)
4064 ISSN: 2252-8938
Thus, the system can recommend the patient’s diagnosis result to the doctor. In this case, we use fuzzy
method to make thalassemia prediction using CBC and PBS data as an alternative to CBC and HPLC data.
We propose a new approach of using CBC and PBS to predict thalassemia as an alternative to CBC and
HPLC which are commonly used by doctors today. We evaluate it by comparing the performance of our
developed system with the opinion of an expert (clinical pathologist) and assess it is potential. We have
conducted a study using laboratory data with and without thalassemia to develop and evaluate a fuzzy
prediction method for thalassemia. Thalassemia screening using fuzzy approach with CBC and PBS data
input is our contribution in this study. The study results show that our model has a very good performance in
identifying thalassemia.
2. METHOD
2.1. Frameworks
The classification of diseases with a fuzzy approach is designed according to a predetermined
framework. The framework is a working conceptual description of the thalassemia classification system. The
framework that we have developed is presented in Figure 1. The main parts of Figure 1 are the knowledge
base, inference engine, and user interface. The knowledge base is built on the clinical pathologist’s
knowledge of blood disorders and thalassemia. The inference engine draws conclusions based on the
information stored in the knowledge base. The inference engine is responsible for reasoning about the
knowledge base and using it to solve problems or answer questions. The inference engine follows a set of
rules or logical steps programmed into the system. The user interface is in the form of a program display that
is designed according to its function. Doctors use the user interface to provide CBC and PBS input.
Furthermore, the doctor will get information on predictions of blood disorders and Thalassemia according to
the knowledge of a clinical pathologist.
CBC
User interface
Blood disorder
prediction
Knowledge Inference
base engine PBS
clinical pathologist Thalassemia Doctor
prediction
CBC values that do not match the reference values indicate that patients are strongly suspected of
having blood disorders. Doctors recommend that the patient undergo further examination, namely PBS, to
ensure that there are suspected blood disorders. Based on PBS [29], [30], [32], thalassemia has several unique
characteristics: microcytic, hypochromic, teardrop, polychromasia, and target cells. The opinion of expert
states that the patient will be called a carrier if he is microcytic and hypochromic. At the same time, it is
called thalassemia if it has other signs, such as teardrops, polychromasia, and target cells.
MCV 1 𝑥 ≤ 71
73 − 𝑥
𝑥 [72] = { 71 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 73
73 − 71
0 𝑥 > 73
MCH 1 𝑥 ≤ 21
23 − 𝑥
𝑥 [22.2] = { 21 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 23
23 − 21
0 𝑥 > 23
For example, we consider patient x with CBC data with HGB values of 7.20, MCV of 72.00, and
MCH of 22.20. Based on the membership function in Table 2, the fuzzy values for blood disorders are HGB:
1.00, MCV: 1.00, and MCH: 0.40. As for not blood disorders, the values are HGB: 0.00, MCV: 0.00, and
MCH:0.60. Then we create fuzzy weights for 40% HGB, 30% MCV, and 30% MCH. So, we get a fuzzy
weight for blood disorders of 0.82 and for not blood disorders of 0.18. Based on the fuzzy weights, it can be
concluded that there is a suspicion that the patient has a blood disorder.
Furthermore, a PBS-based examination was carried out on patients suspected of having blood
disorders. We put a “1” if the mark is found and a “0” if it is not found. Signs in question include microcytic,
hypochromic, teardrop, polychromasia, and target cells [30]. The PBS data of patient x showed microcytic: 1,
hypochromic: 1, teardrop: 1, polychromasia: 1, and target cells: 1. Based on the literature [29] and expert
knowledge, PBS is a method commonly used by doctors to diagnose blood disorders. Therefore, the
conclusion of the diagnosis based on the PBS value is that the patient suffers from thalassemia.
Implementation of fuzzy logic approach for thalassemia screening in children (Erliyan Redy Susanto)
4066 ISSN: 2252-8938
Table 4 shows that clinical pathologists believe that 8 patients have blood disorders and 11 do not.
The system we developed also predicts the same number. However, there are differences in predictions from
data 23 and 30. The predictions from the two data sets are contradictory to each other. The classification
system for blood disorders that we developed gave results including 18 patients identified as having blood
disorders (true positive), 1 patient with not blood disorder identified as a blood disorder (false positive), 1
patient with blood disorder identified as not blood disorder (false negative), and 10 patients with not blood
disorder were identified as not blood disorder (true negative). We present the confusion matrix in Table 5.
Table 5 shows that there were two inaccurate predictions, one wrong prediction for thalassemia and
one wrong prediction for not thalassemia. We can evaluation metrics from these results, such as accuracy,
sensitivity, and specificity. These show that the system has an accuracy value of 93.3%, a sensitivity or recall
value of 94.7%, a specificity value of 90.9%, and a precision value of 94.7%. We illustrate the overall
evaluation metric given by this system in the Figure 2.
We conducted another experiment to evaluate the prediction of thalassemia. The prediction is based
on PBS information about the patient. We have already compared the results with those given by clinical
pathologists. This comparison is presented in Table 6.
96%
95% 95% 95%
95%
94% 93%
93%
RESULTS
92%
91%
91%
90%
89%
88%
Accuracy Sensitivity or recall Specificity Precision F1-Score
TYPE OF EVALUATION
Evaluation must be done to measure the performance of the model we have developed. The
evaluation of the thalassemia classification that we propose gives results including 8 patients who are
thalassemia identified as thalassemia (true positive), 0 patients who are not thalassemia identified as
thalassemia (false positive), 0 patients who are thalassemia identified as not thalassemia (false negative), and
11 patients who were not thalassemia were identified as not thalassemia (true negative). We show the
confusion matrix in Table 7.
Based on expert opinions as shown in Table 7, the accuracy of the test results of the system we
developed to identify Thalassemia using PBS is 100%. However, we feel that this research needs to be
developed further by using more datasets and developing models, for example with fuzzy ensembles [34],
[35]. We hope that this work can be continued by using more actual data to test the quality and accuracy of
the system that has been developed.
Implementation of fuzzy logic approach for thalassemia screening in children (Erliyan Redy Susanto)
4068 ISSN: 2252-8938
4. CONCLUSION
This study provides a novel fuzzy-based approach for thalassemia screening. It adopts a fuzzy-based
approach based on CBC and PBS data. The knowledge used in this research is also based on information
from clinical pathologists. The system has been evaluated using the hospital’s actual patient data and
comparing the results with those provided by experts. Based on CBC and PBS data, our system has very high
accuracy in predicting blood disorders (93% accuracy) and thalassemia (100% accuracy). However, more
data sets are needed to test this model. In the future, this model can adapt the fuzzy ensemble to improve
model performance.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank to Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia for supporting this research. We also thank the
Immanuel Hospital Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, especially Mr. Ns. Dwiantoro, for providing the laboratory
data.
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BIOGRAPHY OF AUTHORS
Implementation of fuzzy logic approach for thalassemia screening in children (Erliyan Redy Susanto)
4070 ISSN: 2252-8938