Comparative analysis of supervised and ensemble models with unsupervised exploration for alzheimer’s disease prediction

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by memory loss and cognitive decline, with no known cure. Early detection of dementia, a primary manifestation of Alzheimer's disease, is critical to enable timely intervention and treatment planning. This study introduces ensemble learning models for predicting Alzheimer's disease and presents a comparative analysis between traditional machine learning and advanced ensemble models. The evaluation is conducted using the "Open Access Series of Imaging Studies" 2 (OASIS-2) dataset. Traditional models, including logistic regression, decision tree, support vector machine, and random forest, are benchmarked against ensemble models such as adaptive boosting, extreme gradient boosting, and a hyperparameter-tuned majority voting ensemble models. Performance is assessed using accuracy, precision, and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results show that ensemble models, particularly the optimized majority voting classifier, consistently outperform traditional methods. To complement the supervised comparison, exploratory unsupervised methods were applied using multiple correspondence analysis and k-means clustering to uncover latent structures in the dataset. By categorizing all variables, these unsupervised methods highlight patterns of clinical and demographic similarity. Unlike prior studies that focus solely on predictive accuracy, this work integrates supervised classification, ensemble learning, and unsupervised exploratory analysis within a unified framework. This combined approach enables both robust performance comparison and deeper insights into latent data structures relevant to Alzheimer's disease. All computational experiments were conducted using the Python programming language.