An Explainable AI-Enhanced Machine Learning Approach for Cardiovascular Disease Detection and Risk Assessment

Abstract

Heart disease remains a major global health concern, particularly in regions with limited access to medical resources and diagnostic facilities. Traditional diagnostic methods often fail to accurately identify and manage heart disease risks, leading to adverse outcomes. Machine learning has the potential to significantly enhance the accuracy, efficiency, and speed of heart disease diagnosis. In this study, we proposed a comprehensive framework that combines classification models for heart disease detection and regression models for risk prediction. We employed the Heart Disease dataset, which comprises 1,035 cases. To address the issue of class imbalance, the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) was applied, resulting in the generation of an additional 100,000 synthetic data points. Performance metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, R2, MSE, RMSE, and MAE, were used to evaluate the model's effectiveness. Among the classification models, Random Forest emerged as the standout performer, achieving an accuracy of 97.2% on real data and 97.6% on synthetic data. For regression tasks, Linear Regression demonstrated the highest R2 values of 0.992 and 0.984 on real and synthetic datasets, respectively, with the lowest error metrics. Additionally, Explainable AI techniques were employed to enhance the interpretability of the models. This study highlights the potential of machine learning to revolutionize heart disease diagnosis and risk prediction, thereby facilitating early intervention and enhancing clinical decision-making.