Rule Extraction, Fuzzy ARTMAP, and Medical Databases

This paper shows how knowledge, in the form of fuzzy rules, can be derived from a self-organizing supervised learning neural network called fuzzy ARTMAP. Rule extraction proceeds in two stages: pruning removes those recognition nodes whose confidence index falls below a selected threshold; and quantization of continuous learned weights allows the final system state to be translated into a usable set of rules. Simulations on a medical prediction problem, the Pima Indian Diabetes (PID) database, illustrate the method. In the simulations, pruned networks about 1/3 the size of the original actually show improved performance. Quantization yields comprehensible rules with only slight degradation in test set prediction performance.British Petroleum (89-A-1204); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (AFOSR-90-0083, ONR-N00014-92-J-4015); National Science Foundation (IRI-90-00530); Office of Naval Research (N00014-91-J-4100); Air Force Office of Scientific Research (90-0083); Institute of Systems Science (National University of Singapore