Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis Assistance using Machine Learning

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common but complex disorder to diagnose since there are no imaging or blood tests that can detect ASD. Several techniques can be used, such as diagnostic scales that contain specific questionnaires formulated by specialists that serve as a guide in the diagnostic process. In this paper, Machine Learning (ML) was applied on three public databases containing AQ-10 test results for adults, adolescents, and children; as well as other characteristics that could influence the diagnosis of ASD. Experiments were carried out on the databases to list which attributes would be truly relevant for the diagnosis of ASD using ML, which could be of great value for medical students or residents, and for physicians who are not specialists in ASD. The experiments have shown that it is possible to reduce the number of attributes to only 5 while maintaining an Accuracy above 0.9. In the other Database to maintain the same level of Accuracy, the fewer attribute numbers were 7. The Support Vector Machine stood out from the others algorithms used in this paper, obtaining superior results in all scenarios.