The application of linear discriminant analysis in the diagnosis of thyroid diseases

The effectiveness of five in-vitro laboratory tests for differentiation between three thyroid functional states (EU, HYPO and HYPER thyroidism) has been determined by using statistical linear discriminant analysis. The optimal linear combination of laboratory tests obtained by means of linear discriminant analysis results in a better use of the information present in each test, so that the possible redundancy of tests can be assessed. In this context, some feature selection criteria were evaluated. It is shown that in this application only two laboratory tests are necessary to obtain a sufficiently high diagnostic effectiveness when linear discriminant analysis is applied.