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Review
. 2021 Mar 22;22(2):1543-1559.
doi: 10.1093/bib/bbaa237.

Deep learning in systems medicine

Affiliations
Review

Deep learning in systems medicine

Haiying Wang et al. Brief Bioinform. .

Abstract

Systems medicine (SM) has emerged as a powerful tool for studying the human body at the systems level with the aim of improving our understanding, prevention and treatment of complex diseases. Being able to automatically extract relevant features needed for a given task from high-dimensional, heterogeneous data, deep learning (DL) holds great promise in this endeavour. This review paper addresses the main developments of DL algorithms and a set of general topics where DL is decisive, namely, within the SM landscape. It discusses how DL can be applied to SM with an emphasis on the applications to predictive, preventive and precision medicine. Several key challenges have been highlighted including delivering clinical impact and improving interpretability. We used some prototypical examples to highlight the relevance and significance of the adoption of DL in SM, one of them is involving the creation of a model for personalized Parkinson's disease. The review offers valuable insights and informs the research in DL and SM.

Keywords: biomarker discovery; data integration; deep learning (DL); disease classification; systems medicine (SM).

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Illustration of the layer-by-layer processing in DL consisting of an input layer, multiple hidden layers and an output layer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of a basic building block in a DNN.
Figure 3
Figure 3
An illustration of the basic structure of an unfolded RNN with an input unit formula image, a hidden unit formula image, and an output unit formula image at a sequence index t. The weight matrices formula image representing input connection, output connection and recurrent connection, respectively, are shared across the sequence dimension.
Figure 4
Figure 4
A typical architecture of CNNs which includes four main operations, i.e. convolution, ReLU, pooling and classification with convolutional layers, and pooling layers arranged in an alternating fashion.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Main steps of the GAF image construction. Starting from an originating time series (A), its ordinate is first scaled to fit the interval [−1, 1] (B), and then translated into polar coordinates (C), and finally to the GAF image (D).
Figure 6
Figure 6
DL for integrative biomarker identification. Abbreviations: Seq-Sequencing, GWAS: Genome wide association.

References

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