Comparing Machine Learning Algorithms: A Graph Theory Approach for Improving Accuracy

Abstract

Graph theory provides a robust framework for modelling complex relationships in medical data, enhancing classification accuracy through relational learning. Unlike traditional machine learning (ML) models that treat data points independently, graph-based approaches support structural dependencies to improve feature representation. This study explores the application of Graph Attention Networks (GAT), GraphSAGE, Graph Convolutional Network(GCN) and Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) for breast cancer classification, employing k-nearest neighbor (KNN) graphs to construct a structured dataset where nodes represent patients and edges capture feature similarities. The effectiveness of the graph-based approaches is evaluated against traditional ML classifiers, including Decision Trees, Random Forest, LightGBM, and XGBoost. Experimental results indicate that GCN, GIN, GAT and GraphSAGE are beat conventional methods, with GCN, GAT and GraphSAGE achieved 100% test-accuracy and with GIN achieved 99.42%, to confirm the percentage of accuracy, authors conducted extensive experiments, including robustness testing by reducing KNN connections, introducing noise, and shuffling train-test splits. Results demonstrate that graph-based models are significantly best than traditional ML models, and these graph-based models maintain same classification accuracy while maintaining stability under robustness tests. The findings confirm that graph-based learning provides a scalable, interpretable, and highly accurate alternative for medical classification tasks, proving its effectiveness in distinguishing between benign and malignant tumors.