Comparison of the levels of accuracy of an artificial neural network model and a logistic regression model for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis.

An accurate diagnosis of acute appendicitis in the early stage is often difficult, and decision support tools to improve such a diagnosis might be required. This study compared the levels of accuracy of artificial neural network models and logistic regression models for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis. Data from 169 patients presenting with acute abdomen were used for the analyses. Nine variables were used for the evaluation of the accuracy of the two models. The constructed models were validated by the ".632+ bootstrap method". The levels of accuracy of the two models for diagnosis were compared by error rate and areas under receiver operating characteristic curves. The artificial neural network models provided more accurate results than did the logistic regression models for both indices, especially when categorical variables or normalized variables were used. The most accurate diagnosis was obtained by the artificial neural network model using normalized variables.