Transforming Cancer Classification: The Role of Advanced Gene Selection

Accurate classification in cancer research is vital for devising effective treatment strategies. Precise cancer classification depends significantly on selecting the most informative genes from high-dimensional datasets, a task made complex by the extensive data involved. This study introduces the Two-stage MI-PSA Gene Selection algorithm, a novel approach designed to enhance cancer classification accuracy through robust gene selection methods. The proposed method integrates Mutual Information (MI) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for gene selection. In the first stage, MI acts as an initial filter, identifying genes rich in cancer-related information. In the second stage, PSO refines this selection to pinpoint an optimal subset of genes for accurate classification. The experimental findings reveal that the MI-PSA method achieves a best classification accuracy of 99.01% with a selected subset of 19 genes, substantially outperforming the MI and SVM methods, which attain best accuracies of 93.44% and 91.26%, respectively, for the same gene count. Furthermore, MI-PSA demonstrates superior performance in terms of average and worst-case accuracy, underscoring its robustness and reliability. The MI-PSA algorithm presents a powerful approach for identifying critical genes essential for precise cancer classification, advancing both our understanding and management of this complex disease.