提出可解释的联邦规则集成方法,解决医疗数据隐私与模型透明性难题。
Federated Rule Ensemble Method in Medical Data

- 基于差分隐私直方图统一切分点,减少各机构间数据差异。
- 在本地用梯度提升树生成规则,全局通过稀疏优化整合系数。
- 兼顾可解释性与预测性能,适合临床决策支持场景。
机器学习在医学研究和临床决策中日益重要,但其效果依赖于大规模多样数据集,而单个机构的数据通常有限。跨机构数据整合虽可缓解此问题,却受限于隐私法规和数据所有权。联邦学习可在不共享原始数据的前提下协同训练模型,但现有方法多采用复杂架构,缺乏可解释性,限制了临床应用。为此,我们提出一种联邦RuleFit框架,构建分布式环境下的统一可解释全局模型。该框架包含三部分:基于差分隐私直方图估计共享切分点,实现规则定义的一致性并降低客户端异质性;使用共享切分点的梯度提升决策树进行本地规则生成;通过$\✓_1$-正则化优化与联邦对偶平均算法进行系数估计,实现稀疏且一致的变量选择。模拟研究表明,该方法性能接近集中式RuleFit,优于现有联邦方法。真实数据分析表明,其能在保持竞争力预测准确率的同时提供可解释洞察。因此,该框架为联邦学习环境中的可解释、可靠建模提供了实用有效的解决方案。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Machine learning has become integral to medical research and is increasingly applied in clinical settings to support diagnosis and decision-making; however, its effectiveness depends on access to large, diverse datasets, which are limited within single institutions. Although integrating data across institutions can address this limitation, privacy regulations and data ownership constraints hinder these efforts. Federated learning enables collaborative model training without sharing raw data; however, most methods rely on complex architectures that lack interpretability, limiting clinical applicability. Therefore, we proposed a federated RuleFit framework to construct a unified and interpretable global model for distributed environments. It integrates three components: preprocessing based on differentially private histograms to estimate shared cutoff values, enabling consistent rule definitions and reducing heterogeneity across clients; local rule generation using gradient boosting decision trees with shared cutoffs; and coefficient estimation via $\ell_1$-regularized optimization using a Federated Dual Averaging algorithm for sparse and consistent variable selection. In simulation studies, the proposed method achieved a performance comparable to that of centralized RuleFit while outperforming existing federated approaches. Real-world analysis demonstrated its ability to provide interpretable insights with competitive predictive accuracy. Therefore, the proposed framework offers a practical and effective solution for interpretable and reliable modeling in federated learning environments.
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