Benchmarking Machine Learning Algorithms on Blood Glucose Prediction for Type i Diabetes in Comparison with Classical Time-Series Models

Objective: This paper aims to compare the performance of several commonly known machine-learning (ML) models versus a classic Autoregression with Exogenous inputs (ARX) model in the prediction of blood glucose (BG) levels using time-series data of patients with Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Methods: The ML algorithms include ML-based regression models and deep learning models such as a vanilla Long-Short-Term-Memory (LSTM) Network and a Temporal Convolution Network (TCN). Evaluations have been conducted with respect to different input features, regression model orders, as well as using the recursive method or direct method for multi-step prediction of BG levels. Prediction performance metrics include the average Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), temporal gain (TG) for early prediction, and the normalized energy of the second-order differences (ESOD) of the predicted time series to reflect risk of false alerts on hypo/hyper glycemia events. Results: The ARX model achieved the lowest average RMSE for both recursive and direct methods, the second highest average TG under the direct method, but with a higher average normalized ESOD than some other models. Conclusion: There was no significant advantage observed from the ML models compared to the classic ARX model in predicting BG levels for T1D, except that TCN's performance was more robust with respect to BG trajectories with spurious oscillations, for which ARX tended to over-predict peak BG values and under-predict valley BG values. Significance: Insight learned from this study could help researchers and clinical practitioners to select appropriate models for BG prediction.