Prediction of precancerous cervical cancer lesions among women living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy in Uganda: a comparison of supervised machine learning algorithms.

backgroundCervical cancer (CC) is among the most prevalent cancer types among women with the highest prevalence in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It is a curable disease if detected early. Machine learning (ML) techniques can aid in early detection and prediction thus reducing screening and treatment costs. This study focused on women living with HIV (WLHIV) in Uganda. Its aim was to identify the best predictors of CC and the supervised ML model that best predicts CC among WLHIV.

methodsSecondary data that included 3025 women from three health facilities in central Uganda was used. A multivariate binary logistic regression and recursive feature elimination with random forest (RFERF) were used to identify the best predictors. Five models; logistic regression (LR), random forest (RF), K-Nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) were applied to identify the out-performer. The confusion matrix and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC/ROC) were used to evaluate the models.

resultsThe results revealed that duration on antiretroviral therapy (ART), WHO clinical stage, TPT status, Viral load status, and family planning were commonly selected by the two techniques and thus highly significant in CC prediction. The RF from the RFERF-selected features outperformed other models with the highest scores of 90% accuracy and 0.901 AUC.

conclusionEarly identification of CC and knowledge of the risk factors could help control the disease. The RF outperformed other models applied regardless of the selection technique used. Future research can be expanded to include ART-naïve women in predicting CC.