Inferring characteristic phenotypes via class association rule mining in the bone dysplasia domain

Finding, capturing and describing characteristic features represents a key aspect in disorder definition, diagnosis and management. This process is particularly challenging in the case of rare disorders, due to the sparse nature of data and expertise. From a computational perspective, finding characteristic features is associated with some additional major challenges, such as formulating a computationally tractable definition, devising appropriate inference algorithms or defining sound validation mechanisms. In this paper we aim to deal with each of these problems in the context provided by the skeletal dysplasia domain. We propose a clear definition for characteristic phenotypes, we experiment with a novel, class association rule mining algorithm and we discuss our lessons learned from both an automatic and human-based validation of our approach.