Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by memory loss and cognitive decline, affecting millions worldwide. Early detection is crucial for effective treatment, as it can slow disease progression and improve quality of life. Machine learning has shown promise in AD detection using various medical modalities. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-level stacking model that combines heterogeneous models and modalities to predict different classes of AD. The modalities include cognitive sub-scores (e.g., clinical dementia rating – sum of boxes, Alzheimer’s disease assessment scale) from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative dataset. In the proposed approach, in level 1, we used six base models (Random Forest (RF), Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), K-nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Native Bayes (NB)to train each modality (ADAS, CDR, and FQA). Then, we build stacking training that combines the outputs of each base model for the training set and staking testing that combines the outcomes of each model for the testing set. In level 2, three stacking models are produced for each modality that trains and evaluates based on the output of 6 base models based on (RF, LR, DT, SVM, KNN, and NB) are combined in training stacking for the training set and testing stacking for the testing set. Stacking training is used to train meta-learners (RF), and stacking testing is used to evaluate meta-learners (RF). Finally, in level 3, the output prediction of the stacking model from each modality (ADAS, CDR, and FQA) in the training and testing datasets is merged to build a new dataset, which is staking training and stacking testing. Training stacking is used to train the meta-learner, and the testing set is used to evaluate the meta-learner and produce the final prediction. Our research also aims to provide model explanations, ensuring efficiency, effectiveness, and trust through explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Feature selection optimization based on Particle Swarm Optimization is used to select the most appropriate sub-scores. The proposed model shows significant potential for improving early disease diagnosis. The results demonstrate that the multi-modality approach outperforms single-modality approaches. Moreover, the proposed multi-level stacking models achieve the highest performance with selected features compared to regular ML classifiers and stacking models using full multi-modalities, achieving accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-scores of 92.08%, 92.07%, 92.08%, and 92.01% for two classes, and 90.03%, 90.19%, 90.03%, and 90.05% for three classes, respectively.

This study aims to identify the critical parameters for implementing a sustainable artificial intelligence (AI) cloud system in the information technology industry (IT). To achieve this, an AHP-ISM-MICMAC integrated hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model was developed and implemented. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the importance of each parameter, while interpretive structural modeling (ISM) was used to establish the interrelationships between the parameters. The cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis was employed to identify the driving and dependent parameters. A total of fifteen important parameters categorized into five major groups have been considered for this analysis from previously published works. The results showed that technological, budget, and environmental issues were the most critical parameters in implementing a sustainable AI cloud system. More specifically, the digitalization of innovative technologies is found to be the most crucial among the group from all aspects, having the highest priority degree and strong driving power. ISM reveals that all the factors are interconnected with each other and act as linkage barriers. This study provides valuable insights for IT industries looking to adopt sustainable AI cloud systems and emphasizes the need to consider environmental and economic factors in decision-making processes.

Cervical cancer affects more than half a million women worldwide each year and causes over 300,000 deaths. The main goals of this paper are to study the effect of applying feature selection methods with stacking models for the prediction of cervical cancer, propose stacking ensemble learning that combines different models with meta-learners to predict cervical cancer, and explore the black-box of the stacking model with the best-optimized features using explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). A cervical cancer dataset from the machine learning repository (UCI) that is highly imbalanced and contains missing values is used. Therefore, SMOTE-Tomek was used to combine under-sampling and over-sampling to handle imbalanced data, and pre-processing steps are implemented to hold missing values. Bayesian optimization optimizes models and selects the best model architecture. Chi-square scores, recursive feature removal, and tree-based feature selection are three feature selection techniques that are applied to the dataset For determining the factors that are most crucial for predicting cervical cancer, the stacking model is extended to multiple levels: Level 1 (multiple base learners) and Level 2 (meta-learner). At Level 1, stacking (training and testing stacking) is employed for combining the output of multi-base models, while training stacking is used to train meta-learner models at level 2. Testing stacking is used to evaluate meta-learner models. The results showed that based on the selected features from recursive feature elimination (RFE), the stacking model has higher accuracy, precision, recall, f1-score, and AUC. Furthermore, To assure the efficiency, efficacy, and reliability of the produced model, local and global explanations are provided.

Cervical cancer (CCa) is the fourth most prevalent and common cancer affecting women worldwide, with increasing incidence and mortality rates. Hence, early detection of CCa plays a crucial role in improving outcomes. Non-invasive imaging procedures with good diagnostic performance are desirable and have the potential to lessen the degree of intervention associated with the gold standard, biopsy. Recently, artificial intelligence-based diagnostic models such as Vision Transformers (ViT) have shown promising performance in image classification tasks, rivaling or surpassing traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs). This paper studies the effect of applying a ViT to predict CCa using different image benchmark datasets. A newly developed approach (ViT-PSO-SVM) was presented for boosting the results of the ViT based on integrating the ViT with particle swarm optimization (PSO), and support vector machine (SVM). First, the proposed framework extracts features from the Vision Transformer. Then, PSO is used to reduce the complexity of extracted features and optimize feature representation. Finally, a softmax classification layer is replaced with an SVM classification model to precisely predict CCa. The models are evaluated using two benchmark cervical cell image datasets, namely SipakMed and Herlev, with different classification scenarios: two, three, and five classes. The proposed approach achieved 99.112% accuracy and 99.113% F1-score for SipakMed with two classes and achieved 97.778% accuracy and 97.805% F1-score for Herlev with two classes outperforming other Vision Transformers, CNN models, and pre-trained models. Finally, GradCAM is used as an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) tool to visualize and understand the regions of a given image that are important for a model’s prediction. The obtained experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the developed ViT-PSO-SVM approach and hold the promise of providing a robust, reliable, accurate, and non-invasive diagnostic tool that will lead to improved healthcare outcomes worldwide.

Colon cancer is the third most common cancer type worldwide in 2020, almost two million cases were diagnosed. As a result, providing new, highly accurate techniques in detecting colon cancer leads to early and successful treatment of this disease. This paper aims to propose a heterogenic stacking deep learning model to predict colon cancer. Stacking deep learning is integrated with pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN) models with a metalearner to enhance colon cancer prediction performance. The proposed model is compared with VGG16, InceptionV3, Resnet50, and DenseNet121 using different evaluation metrics. Furthermore, the proposed models are evaluated using the LC25000 and WCE binary and muticlassified colon cancer image datasets. The results show that the stacking models recorded the highest performance for the two datasets. For the LC25000 dataset, the stacked model recorded the highest performance accuracy, recall, precision, and F1 score (100). For the WCE colon image dataset, the stacked model recorded the highest performance accuracy, recall, precision, and F1 score (98). Stacking-SVM achieved the highest performed compared to existing models (VGG16, InceptionV3, Resnet50, and DenseNet121) because it combines the output of multiple single models and trains and evaluates a metalearner using the output to produce better predictive results than any single model. Black-box deep learning models are represented using explainable AI (XAI).

The COVID-19 virus is one of the most devastating illnesses humanity has ever faced. COVID-19 is an infection that is hard to diagnose until it has caused lung damage or blood clots. As a result, it is one of the most insidious diseases due to the lack of knowledge of its symptoms. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are being investigated for the early detection of COVID-19 using symptoms and chest X-ray images. Therefore, this work proposes stacking ensemble models using two types of COVID-19 datasets, symptoms and chest X-ray scans, to identify COVID-19. The first proposed model is a stacking ensemble model that is merged from the outputs of pre-trained models in the stacking: multi-layer perceptron (MLP), recurrent neural network (RNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and gated recurrent unit (GRU). Stacking trains and evaluates the meta-learner as a support vector machine (SVM) to predict the final decision. Two datasets of COVID-19 symptoms are used to compare the first proposed model with MLP, RNN, LSTM, and GRU models. The second proposed model is a stacking ensemble model that is merged from the outputs of pre-trained DL models in the stacking: VGG16, InceptionV3, Resnet50, and DenseNet121; it uses stacking to train and evaluate the meta-learner (SVM) to identify the final prediction. Two datasets of COVID-19 chest X-ray images are used to compare the second proposed model with other DL models. The result has shown that the proposed models achieve the highest performance compared to other models for each dataset.