用调查数据训练深度学习模型,精准识别尼泊尔儿童营养不良风险。
Deep learning approaches show promise for predicting childhood malnutrition: A comparative study with traditional machine learning methods using survey data
- 对比16种算法,基于注意力机制的TabNet表现最佳。
- 准确率高且能有效识别被忽视的营养不良患儿,避免漏诊。
- 适合资源匮乏地区推广,助力实现全球减贫目标。
儿童营养不良仍是尼泊尔等低资源地区的重大公共卫生问题,传统筛查方法耗时费力且难以在偏远地区开展。本研究首次系统应用机器学习与深度学习方法,在尼泊尔多指标聚类调查(MICS)2019数据上评估16种算法性能。通过整合发育迟缓、消瘦和体重不足构建综合营养不良指标,采用十项评价指标评估模型,重点关注F1-score与召回率以应对类别不平衡及漏检代价高的问题。结果显示,基于注意力机制的TabNet在所有模型中表现最优。共识特征重要性分析表明,母亲教育水平、家庭财富指数和儿童年龄是主要预测因子,其次为地理特征、疫苗接种状态和进食频率。结果证明了一种可扩展的基于调查数据的筛查框架,可用于识别高风险儿童并指导精准干预,支持尼泊尔实现可持续发展目标,并为全球类似低资源地区提供可迁移的方法模板。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Childhood malnutrition remains a major public health concern in Nepal and other low-resource settings, while conventional case-finding approaches are labor-intensive and frequently unavailable in remote areas. This study provides one of the first applications of machine learning and deep learning to identify child malnutrition in Nepal. We systematically compared 16 algorithms spanning deep learning, gradient boosting, and traditional machine learning families, using data from the Nepal Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2019. A composite malnutrition indicator was constructed by integrating stunting, wasting, and underweight status, and model performance was evaluated using ten metrics, with emphasis on F1-score and recall to account for substantial class imbalance and the high cost of failing to detect malnourished children. Among all models, TabNet achieved the highest scores among evaluated models, likely attributable to its attention-based architecture. A consensus feature importance analysis identified maternal education, household wealth index, and child age as the primary predictors of malnutrition, followed by geographic characteristics, vaccination status, and meal frequency. Collectively, these results demonstrate a scalable, survey-based screening framework for identifying children at elevated risk of malnutrition and for guiding targeted nutritional interventions. The proposed approach supports Nepal's progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals and offers a transferable methodological template for similar low-resource settings globally.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。