Does feature selection improve classification accuracy? Impact of sample size and feature selection on classification using anatomical magnetic resonance images

There are growing numbers of studies using machine learning approaches to characterize patterns of anatomical difference discernible from neuroimaging data. The high-dimensionality of image data often raises a concern that feature selection is needed to obtain optimal accuracy. Among previous studies, mostly using fixed sample sizes, some show greater predictive accuracies with feature selection, whereas others do not. In this study, we compared four common feature selection methods. 1) Pre-selected region of interests (ROIs) that are based on prior knowledge. 2) Univariate t-test filtering. 3) Recursive feature elimination (RFE), and 4) t-test filtering constrained by ROIs. The predictive accuracies achieved from different sample sizes, with and without feature selection, were compared statistically. To demonstrate the effect, we used grey matter segmented from the T1-weighted anatomical scans collected by the Alzheimer's disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) as the input features to a linear support vector machine classifier. The objective was to characterize the patterns of difference between Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and cognitively normal subjects, and also to characterize the difference between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients and normal subjects. In addition, we also compared the classification accuracies between MCI patients who converted to AD and MCI patients who did not convert within the period of 12 months. Predictive accuracies from two data-driven feature selection methods (t-test filtering and RFE) were no better than those achieved using whole brain data. We showed that we could achieve the most accurate characterizations by using prior knowledge of where to expect neurodegeneration (hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus). Therefore, feature selection does improve the classification accuracies, but it depends on the method adopted. In general, larger sample sizes yielded higher accuracies with less advantage obtained by using knowledge from the existing literature.