Comparison of Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes and Logistic Regression for Assessing the Necessity for Coronary Angiography

(1) Background: Coronary angiography is considered to be the most reliable method for the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. However, angiography is an invasive procedure that carries a risk of complications; hence, it would be preferable for an appropriate method to be applied to determine the necessity for angiography. The objective of this study was to compare support vector machine, naïve Bayes and logistic regressions to determine the diagnostic factors that can predict the need for coronary angiography. These models are machine learning algorithms. Machine learning is considered to be a branch of artificial intelligence. Its aims are to design and develop algorithms that allow computers to improve their performance on data analysis and decision making. The process involves the analysis of past experiences to find practical and helpful regularities and patterns, which may also be overlooked by a human. (2) Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed on 1187 candidates for angiography referred to Ghaem Hospital, Mashhad, Iran from 2011 to 2012. A logistic regression, naive Bayes and support vector machine were applied to determine whether they could predict the results of angiography. Afterwards, the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, AUC (area under the curve) and accuracy of all three models were computed in order to compare them. All analyses were performed using R 3.4.3 software (R Core Team; Auckland, New Zealand) with the help of other software packages including receiver operating characteristic (ROC), caret, e1071 and rminer. (3) Results: The area under the curve for logistic regression, naïve Bayes and support vector machine were similar—0.76, 0.74 and 0.75, respectively. Thus, in terms of the model parsimony and simplicity of application, the naïve Bayes model with three variables had the best performance in comparison with the logistic regression model with seven variables and support vector machine with six variables. (4) Conclusions: Gender, age and fasting blood glucose (FBG) were found to be the most important factors to predict the result of coronary angiography. The naïve Bayes model performed well using these three variables alone, and they are considered important variables for the other two models as well. According to an acceptable prediction of the models, they can be used as pragmatic, cost-effective and valuable methods that support physicians in decision making.