{"id":{"repo_id":"utc","oai_identifier":"oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1053"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/utc/oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1053","repository":{"repo_id":"utc","name":"University of Tennessee - Chattanooga","base_url":"https://scholar.utc.edu/do/oai/"},"display":{"title":"Measuring MERCI: exploring data mining techniques for examining surgical outcomes of stroke patients","abstract":"Mechanical Embolus Removal in Cerebral Ischemia (MERCI) has been supported by medical trials as an improved method of treating ischemic stroke past the safe window of time for administering clot-busting drugs, and was released for medical use in 2004. The importance of analyzing real-world data collected from MERCI clinical trials is key to providing insights on the effectiveness of MERCI. Most of the existing data analysis on MERCI results has thus far employed conventional statistical analysis techniques. To the best of the knowledge acquired in preliminary research, advanced data analytics and data mining techniques have not yet been systematically applied. To address the issue in this thesis, a comprehensive study on employing state of the art machine learning algorithms was conducted to generate prediction criteria for the outcome of MERCI patients. Specifically, the issue of how to choose the most significant attributes of a data set with limited instance examples was investigated. A few search algorithms to identify the significant attributes of the data set are proposed, followed by a performance analysis for each algorithm. Finally, this approach is applied to the real-world medical data provided by Southeast Regional Stroke Center at Erlanger Hospital of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed approach performs well.","abstract_html":"Mechanical Embolus Removal in Cerebral Ischemia (MERCI) has been supported by medical trials as an improved method of treating ischemic stroke past the safe window of time for administering clot-busting drugs, and was released for medical use in 2004. The importance of analyzing real-world data collected from MERCI clinical trials is key to providing insights on the effectiveness of MERCI. Most of the existing data analysis on MERCI results has thus far employed conventional statistical analysis techniques. To the best of the knowledge acquired in preliminary research, advanced data analytics and data mining techniques have not yet been systematically applied. To address the issue in this thesis, a comprehensive study on employing state of the art machine learning algorithms was conducted to generate prediction criteria for the outcome of MERCI patients. Specifically, the issue of how to choose the most significant attributes of a data set with limited instance examples was investigated. A few search algorithms to identify the significant attributes of the data set are proposed, followed by a performance analysis for each algorithm. Finally, this approach is applied to the real-world medical data provided by Southeast Regional Stroke Center at Erlanger Hospital of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed approach performs well.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["McNabb, Matthew Ronald"],"institution":"University of Tennessee at Chattanooga","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Cao, Yu","Dumas, Joseph; Thompson, Jack","College of Engineering and Computer Science"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":null,"date_issued":"","date_published":null,"updated_at":"2026-07-24T05:46:02Z","subjects":["Computational intelligence","Data mining"],"languages":["English","eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":["https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/54","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Cao, Yu","Dumas, Joseph; Thompson, Jack","College of Engineering and Computer Science"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["McNabb, Matthew Ronald"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2012-08-01T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["University of Tennessee at Chattanooga","Chattanooga (Tenn.)"]},{"key":"dc:relation","label":"Dc Relation","values":["Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Masters theses","Text"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Computational intelligence","Data mining"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["English","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/54"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering","M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Mechanical Embolus Removal in Cerebral Ischemia (MERCI) has been supported by medical trials as an improved method of treating ischemic stroke past the safe window of time for administering clot-busting drugs, and was released for medical use in 2004. The importance of analyzing real-world data collected from MERCI clinical trials is key to providing insights on the effectiveness of MERCI. Most of the existing data analysis on MERCI results has thus far employed conventional statistical analysis techniques. To the best of the knowledge acquired in preliminary research, advanced data analytics and data mining techniques have not yet been systematically applied. To address the issue in this thesis, a comprehensive study on employing state of the art machine learning algorithms was conducted to generate prediction criteria for the outcome of MERCI patients. Specifically, the issue of how to choose the most significant attributes of a data set with limited instance examples was investigated. A few search algorithms to identify the significant attributes of the data set are proposed, followed by a performance analysis for each algorithm. Finally, this approach is applied to the real-world medical data provided by Southeast Regional Stroke Center at Erlanger Hospital of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed approach performs well."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Measuring MERCI: exploring data mining techniques for examining surgical outcomes of stroke patients"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Cao, Yu","Dumas, Joseph; Thompson, Jack","College of Engineering and Computer Science"],"dc:creator":["McNabb, Matthew Ronald"],"dc:date":["2012-08-01T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description":["Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering","M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science."],"dc:description.abstract":["Mechanical Embolus Removal in Cerebral Ischemia (MERCI) has been supported by medical trials as an improved method of treating ischemic stroke past the safe window of time for administering clot-busting drugs, and was released for medical use in 2004. The importance of analyzing real-world data collected from MERCI clinical trials is key to providing insights on the effectiveness of MERCI. Most of the existing data analysis on MERCI results has thus far employed conventional statistical analysis techniques. To the best of the knowledge acquired in preliminary research, advanced data analytics and data mining techniques have not yet been systematically applied. To address the issue in this thesis, a comprehensive study on employing state of the art machine learning algorithms was conducted to generate prediction criteria for the outcome of MERCI patients. Specifically, the issue of how to choose the most significant attributes of a data set with limited instance examples was investigated. A few search algorithms to identify the significant attributes of the data set are proposed, followed by a performance analysis for each algorithm. Finally, this approach is applied to the real-world medical data provided by Southeast Regional Stroke Center at Erlanger Hospital of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Our experimental results have demonstrated that our proposed approach performs well."],"dc:identifier":["https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/54"],"dc:language":["English","eng"],"dc:publisher":["University of Tennessee at Chattanooga","Chattanooga (Tenn.)"],"dc:relation":["Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations"],"dc:rights":["https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en"],"dc:subject":["Computational intelligence","Data mining"],"dc:title":["Measuring MERCI: exploring data mining techniques for examining surgical outcomes of stroke patients"],"dc:type":["Masters theses","Text"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T05:46:02Z"}