• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.722-729
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• 2010

Prediction problems are widely used in medical domains. For example, computer aided diagnosis or prognosis is a key component in a CDSS (Clinical Decision Support System). SVMs with nonlinear kernels like RBF kernels, have shown superior accuracy in prediction problems. However, they are not preferred by physicians for medical prediction problems because nonlinear SVMs are difficult to visualize, thus it is hard to provide intuitive interpretation of prediction results to physicians. Nomogram was proposed to visualize SVM classification models. However, it cannot visualize nonlinear SVM models. Localized Radial Basis Function (LRBF) was proposed which shows comparable accuracy as the RBF kernel while the LRBF kernel is easier to interpret since it can be linearly decomposed. This paper presents a new tool named VRIFA, which integrates the nomogram and LRBF kernel to provide users with an interactive visualization of nonlinear SVM models, VRIFA visualizes the internal structure of nonlinear SVM models showing the effect of each feature, the magnitude of the effect, and the change at the prediction output. VRIFA also performs nomogram-based feature selection while training a model in order to remove noise or redundant features and improve the prediction accuracy. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) can be used to evaluate the prediction result when the data set is highly imbalanced. The tool can be used by biomedical researchers for computer-aided diagnosis and risk factor analysis for diseases.