Review

A review of the application of machine learning in adult obesity studies


  • Received: 24 January 2022 Revised: 30 March 2022 Accepted: 31 March 2022 Published: 31 March 2022
  • In obesity studies, several researchers have been applying machine learning tools to identify factors affecting human body weight. However, a proper review of strength, limitations and evaluation metrics of machine learning algorithms in obesity is lacking. This study reviews the status of application of machine learning algorithms in obesity studies and to identify strength and weaknesses of these methods. A scoping review of paper focusing on obesity was conducted. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched for the application of machine learning in obesity using different keywords. Only English papers in adult obesity between 2014 and 2019 were included. Also, only papers that focused on controllable factors (e.g., nutrition intake, dietary pattern and/or physical activity) were reviewed in depth. Papers on genetic or childhood obesity were excluded. Twenty reviewed papers used machine learning algorithms to identify the relationship between the contributing factors and obesity. Regression algorithms were widely applied. Other algorithms such as neural network, random forest and deep learning were less exploited. Limitations regarding data priori assumptions, overfitting and hyperparameter optimization were discussed. Performance metrics and validation techniques were identified. Machine learning applications are positively impacting obesity research. The nature and objective of a study and available data are key factors to consider in selecting the appropriate algorithms. The future research direction is to further explore and take advantage of the modern methods, i.e., neural network and deep learning, in obesity studies.

    Citation: Mohammad Alkhalaf, Ping Yu, Jun Shen, Chao Deng. A review of the application of machine learning in adult obesity studies[J]. Applied Computing and Intelligence, 2022, 2(1): 32-48. doi: 10.3934/aci.2022002

    Related Papers:

  • In obesity studies, several researchers have been applying machine learning tools to identify factors affecting human body weight. However, a proper review of strength, limitations and evaluation metrics of machine learning algorithms in obesity is lacking. This study reviews the status of application of machine learning algorithms in obesity studies and to identify strength and weaknesses of these methods. A scoping review of paper focusing on obesity was conducted. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched for the application of machine learning in obesity using different keywords. Only English papers in adult obesity between 2014 and 2019 were included. Also, only papers that focused on controllable factors (e.g., nutrition intake, dietary pattern and/or physical activity) were reviewed in depth. Papers on genetic or childhood obesity were excluded. Twenty reviewed papers used machine learning algorithms to identify the relationship between the contributing factors and obesity. Regression algorithms were widely applied. Other algorithms such as neural network, random forest and deep learning were less exploited. Limitations regarding data priori assumptions, overfitting and hyperparameter optimization were discussed. Performance metrics and validation techniques were identified. Machine learning applications are positively impacting obesity research. The nature and objective of a study and available data are key factors to consider in selecting the appropriate algorithms. The future research direction is to further explore and take advantage of the modern methods, i.e., neural network and deep learning, in obesity studies.



    加载中


    [1] WHO, Obesity and Overweight, World Health Organization, 2020. Available from: https://wwwwhoint/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight.
    [2] A. Hruby, J. E. Manson, L. Qi, V. S. Malik, E. B. Rimm, Q. Sun, W. C. Willett, F. B. Hu, Determinants and consequences of obesity, Am. J. Public Health, 106 (2016), 1656-1662. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303326 doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2016.303326
    [3] WHO, The top 10 causes of death, World Health Organization, 2018. Available from: https://wwwwhoint/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death.
    [4] WHO, 10 facts on obesity, World Health Organization, 2017. Available from: https://wwwwhoint/features/factfiles/obesity/en/..
    [5] J. Cawley, C. Meyerhoefer, The medical care costs of obesity: An instrumental variables approach, J. Health Econ., 31 (2012), 219-230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.10.003 doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.10.003
    [6] L. Angrisani, A. Santonicola, P. Iovino, G. Formisani, H. Buchwald, N. Scopinaro, Bariatric Surgery Worldwide 2013, Obes. Surg., 25 (2015), 1822-1832. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11695-015-1657-z doi: 10.1007/s11695-015-1657-z
    [7] T. Bhurosy, R. Jeewon, Overweight and obesity epidemic in developing countries: A problem with diet, physical activity, or socioeconomic status? Scientific World Journal, 2014 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/964236
    [8] E. Alpaydin, Introduction to Machine Learning, Cambridge: MIT press, 2014.
    [9] N. S. Rajliwall, R. Davey, G. Chetty, Machine learning based models for cardiovascular risk prediction, International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Engineering 2018, (iCMLDE), (2018), 142-148. https://doi.org/10.1109/iCMLDE.2018.00034
    [10] J. B. Heaton, N. G. Polson, J. H. Witte, Deep learning for finance: deep portfolios, Appl. Stoch. Model. Bus., 33 (2017), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/asmb.2209 doi: 10.1002/asmb.2209
    [11] J. Kim, J. Canny, Interpretable Learning for Self-Driving Cars by Visualizing Causal Attention, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, (2017), 2942-2950. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCV.2017.320
    [12] D. Gruson, T. Helleputte, P. Rousseau, D. Gruson, Data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning: Opportunities for laboratory medicine and the value of positive regulation, Clin. Biochem., 69 (2019), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiochem.2019.04.013 doi: 10.1016/j.clinbiochem.2019.04.013
    [13] D. Panaretos, E. Koloverou, A. C. Dimopoulos, G. M. Kouli, M. Vamvakari, G. Tzavelas, C. Pitsavos, D. B. Panagiotakos, A comparison of statistical and machine-learning techniques in evaluating the association between dietary patterns and 10-year cardiometabolic risk (2002-2012): The ATTICA study, Brit. J. Nutr., 120 (2018), 326-334. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114518001150 doi: 10.1017/S0007114518001150
    [14] H. C. Koh, G. Tan, Data Mining Applications in Healthcare, Journal of Healthcare Information Management, 19 (2011), 64-72.
    [15] K. Kourou, T. P. Exarchos, K. P. Exarchos, M. V. Karamouzis, D. I. Fotiadis, Machine learning applications in cancer prognosis and prediction, Comput. Struct. Biotec., 13 (2015), 8-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2014.11.005 doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2014.11.005
    [16] V. Gulshan, L. Peng, M. Coram, M. C. Stumpe, D. Wu, A. Narayanaswamy, S. Venugopalan, K. Widner, et al., Development and validation of a deep learning algorithm for detection of diabetic retinopathy in retinal fundus photographs, JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association, 316 (2016), 2402-2410. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.17216 doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.17216
    [17] Y. Xing, J. Wang, Z. Zhao, Combination data mining methods with new medical data to predicting outcome of Coronary Heart Disease, International Conference on Convergence Information Technology, (ICCIT) 2007, (2007), 868-872. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCIT.2007.4420369
    [18] P. Fränti, S. Sieranoja, K. Wikströ m, T. Laatikainen, Clustering diagnoses from 58M patient visits in Finland during 2015-2018, JMIR Medical Informatics, (2022). https://doi.org/10.2196/35422
    [19] Z. Obermeyer, E. J. Emanuel, Predicting the Future: Big Data, Machine Learning, and Clinical Medicine, The New England journal of medicine, 375 (2016), 1216-1219. https://doi.org/doi:10.1056/NEJMp1606181 doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1606181
    [20] M. A. Morris, E. Wilkins, K. A. Timmins, M. Bryant, M. Birkin, C. Griffiths, Can big data solve a big problem? Reporting the obesity data landscape in line with the Foresight obesity system map, Int. J. Obesity, 42 (2018), 1963-1976. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-018-0184-0 doi: 10.1038/s41366-018-0184-0
    [21] C. Y. J. Peng, K. L. Lee, G. M. Ingersoll, An introduction to logistic regression analysis and reporting, J. Educ. Res., 96 (2002), 3-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220670209598786 doi: 10.1080/00220670209598786
    [22] D. Dietrich, B. Heller, Y. Beibei, Data Science and Big Data Analytics: Discovering, Analyzing, Visualizing and Presenting Data, Indianapolis: Wiley, 2015.
    [23] H. O. Alanazi, A. H. Abdullah, K. N. Qureshi, A Critical Review for Developing Accurate and Dynamic Predictive Models Using Machine Learning Methods in Medicine and Health Care, J. Med. Syst., 41 (2017), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0715-6 doi: 10.1007/s10916-017-0715-6
    [24] Y. Y. Song, L. U. Ying, Decision tree methods: applications for classification and prediction, Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry, 27 (2015), 130-135. https://doi.org/10.11919/j.issn.1002-0829.215044 doi: 10.11919/j.issn.1002-0829.215044
    [25] M. Pal, Random forest classifier for remote sensing classification, Int. J. Remote Sens., 26 (2005), 217-222. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431160412331269698 doi: 10.1080/01431160412331269698
    [26] S. V. Vishwanathan, M. N. Murty, SSVM: A simple SVM algorithm, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2002, 3 (2002), 2393-2398. https://doi.org/10.1109/IJCNN.2002.1007516
    [27] Y. Qu, B. Fang, W. Zhang, R. Tang, M. Niu, H. Guo, Y. Yu, X. He, Product-Based Neural Networks for User Response Prediction over Multi-Field Categorical Data, ACM T. Inform. Syst., 37 (2019), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233770 doi: 10.1145/3233770
    [28] T. Chen, C. Guestrin, XGBoost: A scalable tree boosting system, Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, (2016), 785-794. https://doi.org/10.1145/2939672.2939785
    [29] A. T. C. Goh, Back-propagation neural networks for modeling complex systems, Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, 9 (1995), 143-151. https://doi.org/10.1016/0954-1810(94)00011-S doi: 10.1016/0954-1810(94)00011-S
    [30] Y. Lecun, Y. Bengio, G. Hinton, Deep learning, Nature, 521 (2015), 436-444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539 doi: 10.1038/nature14539
    [31] A. K. Jain, M. N. Murty, P. J. Flynn, Data clustering: A review, ACM Comput. Surv., 31 (1999), 264-323. https://doi.org/10.1145/331499.331504 doi: 10.1145/331499.331504
    [32] H. Arksey, L. O'Malley, Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework, Int. J. Soc. Res. Method., 8 (2005), 19-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000119616 doi: 10.1080/1364557032000119616
    [33] H. So, L. McLaren, G. C. Currie, The relationship between health eating and overweight/obesity in Canada: cross-sectional study using the CCHS, Obesity Science and Practice, 3 (2017), 399-406. https://doi.org/10.1002/osp4.123 doi: 10.1002/osp4.123
    [34] N. Daud, N. L. Mohd Noor, S. A. Aljunid, N. Noordin, N. I. M. F. Teng, Predictive Analytics: The Application of J48 Algorithm on Grocery Data to Predict Obesity, 2018 IEEE Conference on Big Data and Analytics, ICBDA, (2018), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBDAA.2018.8629623
    [35] J. F. Easton, H. Román Sicilia, C. R. Stephens, Classification of diagnostic subcategories for obesity and diabetes based on eating patterns, Nutr. Diet., 76 (2019), 104-109. https://doi.org/10.1111/1747-0080.12495 doi: 10.1111/1747-0080.12495
    [36] J. Dunstan, M. Aguirre, M. Bastías, C. Nau, T. A. Glass, F. Tobar, Predicting nationwide obesity from food sales using machine learning, Health Inform. J., 26 (2019), 652-663. https://doi.org/10.1177/1460458219845959 doi: 10.1177/1460458219845959
    [37] N. Kanerva, J. Kontto, M. Erkkola, J. Nevalainen, S. Mannisto, Suitability of random forest analysis for epidemiological research: Exploring sociodemographic and lifestyle-related risk factors of overweight in a cross-sectional design, Scand. J. Public Health, 46 (2018), 557-564. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494817736944 doi: 10.1177/1403494817736944
    [38] K. W. DeGregory, P. Kuiper, T. DeSilvio, J. D. Pleuss, R. Miller, J. W. Roginski, C. B. Fisher, D. Harness, et al., A review of machine learning in obesity, Obes. Rev., 19 (2018), 668-685. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12667 doi: 10.1111/obr.12667
    [39] D. Kim, W. Hou, F. Wang, C. Arcan, Factors Affecting Obesity and Waist Circumference Among US Adults, Prev. Chronic Dis., 16 (2019). https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd16.180220
    [40] R. L. Figueroa, C. A. Flores, Extracting Information from Electronic Medical Records to Identify the Obesity Status of a Patient Based on Comorbidities and Bodyweight Measures, J. Med. Syst., 40 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0548-8 doi: 10.1007/s10916-016-0548-8
    [41] M. A. Green, M. Strong, F. Razak, S. V. Subramanian, C. Relton, P. Bissell, Who are the obese? A cluster analysis exploring subgroups of the obese, J. Public Health (UK), 38 (2016), 258-264. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdv040 doi: 10.1093/pubmed/fdv040
    [42] P. P. Brzan, Z. Obradovic, G. Stiglic, Contribution of temporal data to predictive performance in 30-day readmission of morbidly obese patients, PeerJ, 5 (2017), e3230. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3230 doi: 10.7717/peerj.3230
    [43] A. Kupusinac, E. Stokić, R. Doroslovački, Predicting body fat percentage based on gender, age and BMI by using artificial neural networks, Comput. Meth. Prog. Bio., 113 (2014), 610-619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2013.10.013 doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2013.10.013
    [44] M. Batterham, L. Tapsell, K. Charlton, J. O'shea, R. Thorne, Using data mining to predict success in a weight loss trial, J. Hum. Nutr. Diet., 30 (2017), 471-478. https://doi.org/10.1111/jhn.12448 doi: 10.1111/jhn.12448
    [45] Z. Feng, L. Mo, M. Li, A Random Forest-based ensemble method for activity recognition, 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2015 EMBS, (2015), 5074-5077. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319532
    [46] M. Batterham, E. Neale, A. Martin, L. Tapsell, Data mining: Potential applications in research on nutrition and health, Nutr. Diet., 74 (2017), 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/1747-0080.12337 doi: 10.1111/1747-0080.12337
    [47] W. J. Heerman, N. Jackson, M. Hargreaves, S. A. Mulvaney, D. Schlundt, K. A. Wallston, R. L. Rothman, Clusters of Healthy and Unhealthy Eating Behaviors Are Associated With Body Mass Index Among Adults, J. Nutr. Educ. Behav., 49 (2017), 415-421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2017.02.001 doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2017.02.001
    [48] I. Sarasfis, C. Diou, I. Ioakimidis, A. Delopoulos, Assessment of In-Meal Eating Behaviour using Fuzzy SVM, 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), (2019), 6939-6942. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857606
    [49] P. Pouladzadeh, S. Shirmohammadi, A. Bakirov, A. Bulut, A. Yassine, Cloud-based SVM for food categorization, Multimed. Tools Appl., 74 (2015), 5243-5260. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-2116-x doi: 10.1007/s11042-014-2116-x
    [50] E. J. Heravi, H. Habibi Aghdam, D. Puig, A deep convolutional neural network for recognizing foods, Eighth International Conference on Machine Vision (ICMV), 9875 (2015), 98751D. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2228875 doi: 10.1117/12.2228875
    [51] E. Disse, S. Ledoux, C. Bétry, C. Caussy, C. Maitrepierre, M. Coupaye, M. Laville, C. Simon, An artificial neural network to predict resting energy expenditure in obesity, Clin. Nutr., 37 (2018), 1661-1669. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2017.07.017 doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2017.07.017
    [52] N. Cesare, P. Dwivedi, Q. C. Nguyen, E. O. Nsoesie, Use of social media, search queries, and demographic data to assess obesity prevalence in the United States, Palgrave Communications, 5 (2019), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0314-x doi: 10.1057/s41599-019-0314-x
    [53] P. Kuhad, A. Yassine, S. Shimohammadi, Using distance estimation and deep learning to simplify calibration in food calorie measurement, IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Virtual Environments for Measurement Systems and Applications, CIVEMSA, (2015), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1109/CIVEMSA.2015.7158594
    [54] K. Shameer, K. W. Johnson, B. S. Glicksberg, J. T. Dudley, P. P. Sengupta, Machine learning in cardiovascular medicine: Are we there yet? Heart, 104 (2018), 1156-1164. https://doi.org/10.1136/heartjnl-2017-311198 doi: 10.1136/heartjnl-2017-311198
    [55] B. A. Goldstein, A. M. Navar, R. E. Carter, Moving beyond regression techniques in cardiovascular risk prediction: Applying machine learning to address analytic challenges, Eur. Heart J., 38 (2017), 1805-1814. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehw302 doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehw302
    [56] N. Jothi, N. A. A. Rashid, W. Husain, Data Mining in Healthcare - A Review, Procedia Computer Science, 72 (2015), 306-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.12.145 doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2015.12.145
    [57] A. L. Beam, I. S. Kohane, Big data and machine learning in health care, JAMA - Journal of the American Medical Association, 319 (2018), 1317-1318. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.18391 doi: 10.1001/jama.2017.18391
    [58] A. Mozumdar, G. Liguori, Corrective Equations to Self-Reported Height and Weight for Obesity Estimates among U.S. Adults: NHANES 1999-2008, Res. Q. Exercise Sport, 87 (2016), 47-58. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.2015.1124971 doi: 10.1080/02701367.2015.1124971
    [59] M. Stommel, C. A. Schoenborn, Accuracy and usefulness of BMI measures based on self-reported weight and height: Findings from the NHANES & NHIS 2001-2006, BMC Public Health, 9 (2009), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-9-421 doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-9-421
    [60] D. Rativa, B. J. T. Fernandes, A. Roque, Height and Weight Estimation from Anthropometric Measurements Using Machine Learning Regressions, IEEE J. Transl. Eng. He., 6 (2018), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1109/JTEHM.2018.2797983 doi: 10.1109/JTEHM.2018.2797983
    [61] J. A. Sáez, J. Luengo, F. Herrera, Predicting noise filtering efficacy with data complexity measures for nearest neighbor classification, Pattern Recogn., 46 (2013), 355-364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2012.07.009 doi: 10.1016/j.patcog.2012.07.009
    [62] T. Ferenci, L. Kovács, Predicting body fat percentage from anthropometric and laboratory measurements using artificial neural networks, Applied Soft Computing Journal, 67 (2018), 834-839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2017.05.063 doi: 10.1016/j.asoc.2017.05.063
    [63] S. P. Goldstein, F. Zhang, J. G. Thomas, M. L. Butryn, J. D. Herbert, E. M. Forman, Application of Machine Learning to Predict Dietary Lapses During Weight Loss, Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 12 (2018), 1045-1052. https://doi.org/10.1177/1932296818775757 doi: 10.1177/1932296818775757
  • Reader Comments
  • © 2022 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com
  • 1. 

    沈阳化工大学材料科学与工程学院 沈阳 110142

  1. 本站搜索
  2. 百度学术搜索
  3. 万方数据库搜索
  4. CNKI搜索

Metrics

Article views(2605) PDF downloads(229) Cited by(1)

Article outline

Figures and Tables

Tables(4)

Other Articles By Authors

/

DownLoad:  Full-Size Img  PowerPoint
Return
Return

Catalog