A classifier fusion strategy to improve the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases

People in developed countries are living longer, and this has resulted in the prevalence of age-related diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Many believe that the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases will provide a much more sustainable framework for dealing with age-related diseases in the future. This paper considers this idea and proposes a new classifier fusion strategy that combines classification algorithms and rules (voting, product, mean, median, maximum and minimum) to measure specific behaviours in people suffering with neurodegenerative diseases. More specifically, the fusion strategy analyses the stride-to-stride intervals in gait and its correlation with neurological functions. This approach is compared with base level classifiers (a single classification algorithm) using a set of feature vectors associated with gait patterns obtained from neurodegenerative patients and healthy people. The results show that the fusion strategy improves classification. Our experiments successfully show that a fusion strategy generates better results and classifies subjects more accurately than base level classifiers.