Data Classification with Modified Density Weighted Distance Measure for Diffusion Maps

Clinical data analysis is of fundamental importance, as classifications and detailed characterizations of diseases help physicians decide suitable management for patients, individually. In our study, we adopt diffusion maps to embed the data into corresponding lower dimensional representation, which integrate the information of potentially nonlinear progressions of the diseases. To deal with nonuniformaity of the data, we also consider an alternative distance measure based on the estimated local density. Performance of this modification is assessed using artificially generated data. Another clinical dataset that comprises metabolite concentrations measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy was also classified. The algorithm shows improved results compared with conventional Euclidean distance measure.