Artificial Neural Networks for Medical Diagnosis: A Review of Recent Trends

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence systems (especially computer-aided diagnosis and artificial neural networks) are increasingly finding many uses in medical diagnosis application in recent times. These methods are adaptive learning algorithms that are capable of handling multiple and heterogeneous types of clinical data with a view of integrating them into categorized outputs. In this study, we briefly review and discuss the concept, capabilities, and applicability of artificial neural network techniques to medical diagnosis, through consideration of some selected physical and mental diseases. The study focuses on scholarly researches within the years, 2010 to 2019. Findings show that no electronic online clinical database exists in Nigeria and the Sub-Saharan countries, most review researches in this area focused mainly on physical diseases without considering mental illnesses, the application of ANN in mental and comorbid disorders have not been thoroughly studied, ANN models and algorithms consider mainly homogeneous input data sources and not heterogeneous input data sources, and ANN models on multi-objective output systems are few as compared to single output ANN models.