Exploiting the interplay between cross-sectional and longitudinal data in Class III malocclusion patients

Abstract

The aim of the study was to investigate how to improve the forecasting of craniofacial unbalance risk during growth among patients affected by Class III malocclusion. To this purpose we used computational methodologies such as Transductive Learning (TL), Boosting (B), and Feature Engineering (FE) instead of the traditional statistical analysis based on Classification trees and logistic models. Such techniques have been applied to cephalometric data from 728 cross-sectional untreated Class III subjects (6–14 years of age) and from 91 untreated Class III subjects followed longitudinally during the growth process. A cephalometric analysis comprising 11 variables has also been performed. The subjects followed longitudinally were divided into two subgroups: favourable and unfavourable growth, in comparison with normal craniofacial growth. With respect to traditional statistical predictive analytics, TL increased the accuracy in identifying subjects at risk of unfavourable growth. TL algorithm was useful in diffusion of information from longitudinal to cross-sectional subjects. The accuracy in identifying high-risk subjects to growth worsening increased from 63% to 78%. Finally, a further increase in identification accuracy, up to 83%, was produced by FE. A ranking of important variables in identifying subjects at risk of growth worsening, therefore, has been obtained.

Sub-clustering in skeletal class III malocclusion phenotypes via principal component analysis in a southern European population

“…:(0123456789) Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:17882 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74488-w www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Beyond differences in ethnicity and gender, skeletal class III malocclusion is strongly linked to genetic components and environmental factors 29 . Current phenotype and genotype studies of this malocclusion [30][31][32][33] have been reported in the literature to develop preventive and therapeutic advances in these patients 34,35 . Recent studies in the field of medicine focus on the search for preventive measures and individualized treatments based on the patient's morphological and genetic components 34,[36][37][38] .…”

“…Current phenotype and genotype studies of this malocclusion [30][31][32][33] have been reported in the literature to develop preventive and therapeutic advances in these patients 34,35 . Recent studies in the field of medicine focus on the search for preventive measures and individualized treatments based on the patient's morphological and genetic components 34,[36][37][38] . However, this will require future research, larger samples, and collaborative multicenter studies 5 to better understand the differences between regions and environmental factors involved.…”

Complexity and data mining in dental research: A network medicine perspective on interceptive orthodontics

“…In particular, clustering refers to the extraction of group latent similarities within data that allow subjects to be grouped into subsections. The clustering assumption states that such subsections of subjects often exhibit the same outcome 70 . In orthodontics, because of the complexity of medical data and heterogeneity of patients, identifying subsections of patients by intuition can be difficult 20 …”

“…Unfortunately, they do not give a clue about the reasoning that led to deciding the saliency, the relevance or the causal importance of the variables 83,84 . Interestingly, theoretical advancements with methods from statistical physics will also allow determining partial information as estimating longitudinal data from cross‐sectional to create individual prognosis 70 . Humans are brilliant at clinical pattern recognition in dimensions equal to or less than three.…”

A multilevel analysis of craniofacial growth in subjects with untreated Class III malocclusion

“…Although in recent years interest concerning treatment of Class III malocclusion has intensified, studies on craniofacial growth of untreated Class III subjects continue to be scarce . To date, investigators have found that Class III malocclusion is the dentoskeletal disharmony with the lowest prevalence in the world; a global range varies from 0% to 26.7% .…”