abstract = "We describe the use of a genetic programming system to
induce classifiers that can discriminate between
Parkinson's disease patients and healthy age-matched
controls. The best evolved classifier achieved an AUC
of 0.92, which is comparable with clinical diagnosis
rates. Compared to previous studies of this nature, we
used a relatively large sample of 49 PD patients and 41
controls, allowing us to better capture the wide
diversity seen within the Parkinson's population.
Classifiers were induced from recordings of these
subjects' movements as they carried out repetitive
finger tapping, a standard clinical assessment for
Parkinson's disease. For ease of interpretability, we
used a relatively simple window-based classifier
architecture which captures patterns that occur over a
single tap cycle. Analysis of window matches suggested
the importance of peak closing deceleration as a basis
for classification. This was supported by a follow-up
analysis of the data set, showing that closing
deceleration is more discriminative than features
typically used in clinical assessment of finger
tapping.",