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OPEN Detection of autism spectrum

disorder (ASD) in children
and adults using machine learning
Muhammad Shoaib Farooq 1, Rabia Tehseen 2, Maidah Sabir 1 & Zabihullah Atal 3*

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) presents a neurological and developmental disorder that has an
impact on the social and cognitive skills of children causing repetitive behaviours, restricted interests,
communication problems and difficulty in social interaction. Early diagnosis of ASD can prevent from
its severity and prolonged effects. Federated learning (FL) is one of the most recent techniques that
can be applied for accurate ASD diagnoses in early stages or prevention of its long-term effects. In
this article, FL technique has been uniquely applied for autism detection by training two different ML
classifiers including logistic regression and support vector machine locally for classification of ASD
factors and detection of ASD in children and adults. Due to FL, results obtained from these classifiers
have been transmitted to central server where meta classifier is trained to determine which approach
is most accurate in the detection of ASD in children and adults. Four different ASD patient datasets,
each containing more than 600 records of effected children and adults have been obtained from
different repository for features extraction. The proposed model predicted ASD with 98% accuracy (in
children) and 81% accuracy (in adults).

Keywords : ASD,Autism, Machine Learning, Federated Learning

Autism is categorized as neuro-developmental disorder which has severe effects on social growth and develop-
ment in children and adults. Although its complete cure seems not possible but early diagnosis is preferable as
it helps in more effective treatment compared to conventional behavioural investigations that take much time in
detecting and diagnosing ASD by analysing children behaviour in clinics1. ASD has been mostly diagnosed in
2 years old child but it can be diagnosed in children later depending on complexity of symptoms and severity of
the disorder2. It has generally occurred due to environmental factors or any genetic linkage which not only
effects the nervous system but also has an overall impact on social and cognitive skills of the children and
adults. The extent and the intensity of its symptoms are quite variable. Common signs of the condition include
difficulty in communication particularly in social situations, obsessional interests, and repeated mannerisms 3.
A complete examination is needed to detect ASD comprising thorough evaluation and series of assessments
performed by child healthcare professionals and psychologists. Early treatment and diagnosis of ASD are
crucial since they help to somewhat lessen symptoms, which enhances the person’s overall quality of life4.
However, a lot of criti-cal time can be lost in diagnosing ASD because it cannot be properly detected by
depicting only behaviours of children or adults in clinic. Autism can be identified as early as possible using a
range of clinical approaches, but actually these are time-consuming diagnostic procedures infrequently carried
out unless the predictive risk of ASD development is high5. Machine learning (ML) gives an opportunity to
train ASD models in less time and more accuracy6. ML techniques are crucial for quick and accurate
assessment of ASD risk and streamlin-ing the entire diagnostic process which assist families in getting to the
critical therapies more quickly7. Various classification models of ML can be used for early prediction of autism
to prevent its prolonged effects in adults as well as children8.
Many other computational techniques have also been proposed in literature9 such as Hosseinzadeh et al.10
proposed IoT based solution for ASD detection and Eslami and Saeed11 presented deep learning based model
for healthcare of ASD effected patents. However, obtaining huge amount of data for model training in central-
ized or distributed environment remained a challenge. Hospitals hesitate to share their data as data are the most
valuable asset and regional data protection legislations also prohibit data sharing12. Data owner organizations
have many serious concerns about data privacy, data security and data protection. Moreover, transmission of
big dataset over the network for training machine learning model introduces further barriers of network latency,

1Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Management and Technology, Lahore 54000,

Pakistan. 2Department of Computer Science, University of Central Punjab, Lahore 54000, Pakistan. 3Department
of Computer Science, Kardan University, Kabul 1007, Afghanistan. *email: [email protected]
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communication delay and data theft13. Therefore, it is the immense need of time that a model should be
proposed in which data remain safe with owner organization.
Federated Learning (FL) technique is the most advanced approach of ML in which data remains secure with
owner organization and small sized local ML based classifier is trained onsite without moving data over the
network14. FL is very beneficent in ensuring data security as data are not being shared over the network
therefore data privacy, data protection and data security issues are automatically resolved15. Moreover, network
issues will not be raised as only small sized local data model is travelling over the network towards central
server instead of huge data16. Many researchers have applied FL for detection of multiple neurological
disorders17. Ali et al.18 have applied FL for the detection of colon cancer using pixel level segmentation dataset.
Ghosh et al.19 have applied FL for medical image segmentation. Nigmatullina et al.17 proposed a digital
platform to monitor and support children with ASD using FL. Novelty of our work is the application of FL
technique for detection of ASD in both children and adults. Two different ML models including SVM and LR
have been trained locally using four differ-ent ASD datasets of features containing records about children and
adults obtained from free sources and data providing agencies listed in Table 1 for autism detection. We have
also compared the results of proposed model with already proposed ASD detection methods and comparable
accuracy has been obtained. Major contribution of this work is the combination of different local ML based
models for training central FL based meta classifier on features dataset of children and adults to detect ASD
risk factors with reasonable accuracy.
Our article is organized in multiple sections. In “Introduction” section presents introduction of the autism
detection approaches. Most recent studies conducted on autism detection have been summarized in “Related
work” section. Research methodology, experimentation, analysis and results have been presented in “Material
and method” section. Results have been discussed in “Discussion” section. Conclusion and future directions
have been illustrated in “Conclusion” section.

Related work
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder that results various impairments in social
interaction, communication, and the existence of unvaried patterns of behaviour in children and adults20.
Alfalasi21 reported that in United States 1 out of 54 children is affected by autism. Detecting autism earlier in
one life can make a big difference than treating it later22. According to World Health Organization (WHO)
every year one among 160 children is diagnosed with ASD traits all over the world23. Treating ASD earlier is
always the best option for toddlers as they are still developing24.
Different symptoms identified in ASD patients have been considered as features that can be used for ASD
detection. Lawan et al.25 and Cantin-Garside et al.26 observed behavioural disorder, Beary et al.27 and Derbali et
al.28 recorded facial expression disorder and Devika et al.29 observed structural disorder in ASD effected per-
sons. Emotional disorder in ASD affected persons has been studied by Makhnytkina et al.30 and mental disorder
has been analysed in Liu et al.31 and Lord et al.32. Many researchers explored medical imageries for ASD
detection including Bilic et al.33, Husna et al.34, Liu et al.35, Nogay and Adeli36. Images of brain have been used
by Subah et al.37, Xu et al.38, Yin et al.39, Shenouda et al.40 to detect ASD in patients. Single and cross order
strategy for ASD detection has been proposed in Wawer et al.41.
Researchers have used wearable devices containing sensors for detection of ASD42,43. Application of intelli-
gent approaches present advanced ways to economically detect ASD effected children and adults44. Models
have been proposed in the literature describing application of different methods and approaches for ASD
detection like structural MRI45, neural networks46, machine learning47–49, deep learning50, transfer
learning51,52 and IoT 53. All these techniques have been applied to detect ASD with reasonable accuracy in
children and adults but faced limitations of data acquisition as hospitals hesitate or refuse to share patient
records due to organizational policies and regional data protection legislations. Data security, data privacy and
data availability are the huge challenges in developing effective intelligent models. Even if access to data is
granted, transferring huge dataset over the network is again challenging, rising a lot of network issues regarding
network congestion, latency and data theft.
Federated learning (FL) provides a generous solution to address all above mentioned problems. FL is an
advanced ML based approach that never transmits data over the network 54. Data is kept with its generating
organization55 whereas only a small sized local data model is trained from onsite data and transmitted over the
network towards central server where all local models are combined to train meta classifier for determining
which ML model is most effective in autism detection 56. Objective of proposed model is to detect ASD
symptoms at different stages of age with minimum time, controlled expense and maximum accuracy. Novelty
of our work is the application of federated learning technique for autism detection in children and adults by
processing four different datasets by training SVM and LR classifiers locally. Major contribution of this work
is the detection

Categories Source No. of instances No. of attributes

A: https:// archi ve. ics. uci. edu/ ml/ datas ets/ Autis tic+ Spect rum+ Disor der 692 21
Children + Screen-ing + Data + for + Children++
B: https:// www. kaggle. com/ datas ets/ fabde lja/ autism- scree ning- for- toddl ers 654 19
C: https:// archi ve. ics. uci. edu/ ml/ datas ets/ Autism+ Scree ning+ Adult 704 21
Adults
D: https:// www. kaggle. com/ datas ets/ andre wmvd/ autism- scree ning- on- adults 700 19

Table 1. Dataset description of children and adults.

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of ASD by the application of most advanced Federated Learning technique by training ML classifiers locally on
features dataset of children and adults to find the predictive risk factors of Autism with reasonable accuracy.

Material and method

ASD indicates a disability in human development due to variations of neurons present in human brain57. Prac-
titioners believe that there are multivariate sources that work jointly to cause ASD58. Diagnosis of ASD is also
very challenging task as no medical test like blood test exists to detect ASD. Doctors usually apply
psychological and observational strategies to sense ASD in a patient by analysing multiple aspects of their daily
routine as mentioned in Fig. 1.
In this article, a unique federated learning based model has been proposed in which four different datasets
of adults and children have been analysed using LR and SVM locally to train local data models. These local
models have been transmitted towards central server for training of meta classifier in global model to predict
autism in children and adults. Proposed model architecture presented in Fig. 2 comprises of five components
including dataset acquisition, data pre-processing, ML models training for ASD detection and performance
comparison of different ML models to determine the most effective model that can accurately diagnose autism.
The first step was acquisition of data in which publicly available four datasets of children and adults from data
sources listed in Table 1 have been obtained. In second step, data pre-processing and normalization was
performed for data compression and data cleaning and removal of noisy data. After normalization, in third
step, four datasets have been locally processed by SVM and LR classifiers for autism detection. Results of
training ML classifiers have been transmitted to central server where meta classifier has been trained to
compare results and identify the best

Execu�ve
Func�on
Verbal &
Sensory
non verbal Processin
communica�o g
n
ASD
Features

Preserva�ve Repe��v
Thinking e
behaviors
Motor
skills

Figure 1. Aspects observed while diagnosing ASD.

Figure 2. Proposed model architecture.

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model to detect autism. In last step, results of meta classifier were validated by calculating accuracy, precision
and F1 score to detect autism disorder with more accuracy as shown in Fig. 2.

Step1: Dataset
Four datasets have been obtained covering two dimensions: children and adults. Source and specifications
of each dataset is listed in Table 1.

Step 2: Pre-processing
According to Q-Chart-10, ten different features have been unanimously identified for processing of adults
and children datasets at same scale for segregation of autism effected patients from normal ones as shown in
Table 2.
The Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Children (Q-CHART-10) screening approach approved by Trans-
forming autism project, UK, served as the foundation for the conduction of this research3 . Thirty questions
have been asked to record responses (R1–R10) for features mentioned in Table 2. The value of these responses
is assigned to classes as per following criteria for assigning weightage (score) to every response.

Feature_found== 0
If (score >3)
{
Output: ASD feature exists
Flag == True
Feature_found == +1
}
Else
{
Flag == False
Output: ASD feature does not exist

If score of class is more than 3, it indicates that ASD feature exits, its weight is incremented by 1 and
“Yes” will be stored in response set otherwise value of flag will remain 0 that shows absence of any ASD
features and “No” will be stored in the response set. Each class variable corresponds to more than one
questions confirming the presence of feature extracted from Q-CHART-10 checklist. Information stored in
class response set is in the binary format indicating Yes (stored as 1) and No (stored as 0). Local ML models
have been trained on these responses presented in Table 2.
The response dataset contained some noisy and missing records therefore data transformations were needed
to carry out prior to train ML classifier for model training and analysis. Category variables are handled using
label encoding. To make labels machine-readable, label encoding transforms them into numeric form.
Repeated labels receive the same value as those that were previously allocated. The binary label encoding of
classes with ten features have been chosen.

Feature no Title Description Response

Patient’s age Children (0–15 years), adults (16 years or above)
Patient’s gender Male/female
1 R1
Ethnicity of patient Common ethnicities
Residence country Countries list
2 Verbal communication Response on calling Name, saying papa, mama R2
3 Non-verbal communication Eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, use of objects and body language R3
4 Sensory processing See, hear, smell, taste, touch R4
5 Repetitive behaviour Do action again and again R5
6 Motor skills Walking, running, riding a bike R6
7 Preservative thinking Rumination, repetitive thinking, worry R7
8 Having jaundice Child/adult born with jaundice R8
9 Person taking ASD test Parent staff, caregiver etc. R9
10 Used the screening app before Did the user use a screening app for ASD R10
Screening method type Type of methods of screening chosen based on age category

Table 2. Feature description.

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Step 3: Federated Learning process

In the proposed architecture, Federated learning process starts from step three in which pre-processed and
normalized datasets have been processed for training of SVM and LR classifiers. Workflow of FL process is
presented in Fig. 3. Results of these classifiers in terms of accuracy, precision and F1 score have been
calculated and transmitted to central server for training of meta classifier at server. Meta classifier will
determine which model is more appropriate in detecting autism and will train the global model accordingly.
Global model will be disseminated in all clients as a single tool for autism detection.

Experiment. The children and adult datasets (A, C respectively) presented in Table 1 have been divided
into training and test datasets. Training datasets contained 80% records and testing datasets which will be used
to test the proposed model contained 20% of total records.

Experimental setup. Experiment has been performed in two different dimensions. In first dimension, SVM and
LR has been applied on dataset of adults presented in Table 1. In second dimension, SVM and LR has been
applied on dataset of children as presented in Fig. 4.
Results obtained after training local models have been transmitted to central server through 4G ethernet
gateway where meta classifier is trained to predict which ML model is outperforming in prediction of ASD.
Best model is selected for the training of global model that is transmitted back to the clients so that all clients
use same efficient model for autism detection.

Analysis and results. Two-dimensional exploratory analysis has been performed on datasets by plotting several
graphs to depict different perspectives of the ASD response set. In first dimension, variance between datasets
has been analyzed using statistical method ANOVA. ANOVA being a powerful statistical tool compares the
mean of datasets and determines that if there is a significant difference between them as summarized in Table
3.
Ho (Null hypothesis) = there is no significant difference between the means of datasets being compared.
H1 (alternate hypothesis) = there is a significant difference between the means of datasets being compared.
Results of ANOVA have been listed in Table 4. Total variability of data is calculated by sum of squares
(SS). Degree of freedom represent the number of independent observations available to estimate every
response. F-statistics and associated p-value are significant results obtained from ANOVA test. F-statistics
determines the variability between the groups to the variability within the group. p value presents the
probability to observe a difference as large as the one observed in response set.
The f-ratio value is 100.8232. The p value is < 0.00001. The result is significant at p < 0.05. There is a
significant difference between the means being compared. The p value is less than the commonly used
significance level

Figure 3. Proposed model workflow.

Figure 4. Experimental setup.

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 Classes 1 2 3 4 5 Total
Sample (X) 70 70 70 70 70 350
∑X 245 236 2142 245 236 3104
Mean (k) 3.5 3.3714 30.6 3.5 3.3714 8.869
∑X2 1155 880 100,132 1155 880 104,202
Std.Dev. (σ) 2.0764 1.1056 22.3888 2.0764 1.1056 14.8222

Table 3. Analysis of variance summary using ANOVA.

Source Sum of Squares (SS = Σσ/Σk) Degree of freedom (df) Mean square (MS = ∑X2/df)
Between-datasets 41,323.47 4 10,330.87
Within-datasets 35,350.49 345 102.4652
Total 76,673.95 349

Table 4. ANOVA results.

(0.05), it can be inferred that Ho has been rejected and can be concluded that H1 has been accepted indicating
the significant difference between the means being compared.
Second dimension of analysis part focused on visualizing performance of global model trained on central
server through meta classifier by drawn receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Data characteristics of
ROC curve are presented in Table 5. Figure 5 compares the performance of global model on the basis of
sensitiv-ity [TP/(TP + FN)] and specificity [TP/(TP + FN)].

Number of actual negative cases = 31

Number of actual positive cases = 26
Response data
Category 1 2 3 4 5
Actual Negative cases 11 12 5 1 2
Actual positive cases 1 2 4 9 10
Observed operating points
FPF 0.0000 0.645 0.968 0.2581 0.6452 1.0000
TPF 0.0000 0.3846 0.7308 0.8846 0.9615 1.0000
Initial values of parameters Final values of parameters
A = 1.5647 Procedure converges after 6 iterations
B = 0.9591 A = 1.7403
Z(K): − 0.3718 0.6490 1.3003 1.5182 B = 1.1114

LOGL = − 83.3485 Z(K): − 0.3322 0.5665 1.1380

1.7785 LOGL = − 77.6311
Variance–covariance matrix Correlation matrix

A 0.2089 0.1097 0.0440 0.0520 0.0367 − 0.0012 A 1.0000 0.6688 0.4215 0.4991
0.3029 − 0.0070

B 0.1097 0.1288 0.0182 0.0048 − 0.0285 − 0.0873 B 0.6688 1.0000 0.2225

0.0592 − 0.3004 − 0.6424

Z(1) 0.0440 0.0182 0.0521 0.0282 0.0200 0.0110 Z(1) 0.4215 0.2225 1.0000 0.5413
0.3309 0.1272

Z(2) 0.0520 0.0048 0.0282 0.0519 0.0425 0.0378 Z(2) 0.4991 0.0592 0.5413 1.0000
0.7050 0.4388

Z(3) 0.0367 − 0.0285 0.0200 0.0425 0.0701 0.0766 Z(3) 0.3029 − 0.3004 0.3309
0.7050 1.0000 0.7642

Z(4) − 0.0012 − 0.0873 0.0110 0.0378 0.0766 0.1432 Z(4) − 0.0070 − 0.6424 0.1272
0.4388 0.7642 1.0000
Summary of ROC curve
Area = 0.8778
Std. dev. (area) =
0.0461
Table 5. Data characteristics (ROC curve).

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Figure 5. ROC curve.

Validation. In response set, data points have been gathered into one of the following four classes to validate
ASD diagnosis. Class1: true positive (TP) indicates that the person has autism, and we have correctly recorded
autism positivity. Class 2: true negative (TN) means that a person does not has autism and wrongly recorded as
negative in response dataset. Class 3: false positive (FP) depicts that response dataset incorrectly recorded that
a person had ASD who does not have it. Class 4: false negative (FN) indicates that it was predicted mistakenly
that the person does not have ASD, but they have ASD. The confusion matrix of ASD that facilitated in the
validation process is given below in Table 6.
Precision, recall and F1 score are the measures used to validate performance of LR and SVM classifiers.
Preci-sion demonstrates the cases that detected autism and we predicted them correctly. Whereas recall
indicates the number of autism cases identified correctly are relevant out of total instances that had autism.
Proposed model has been validated using dataset B, D given in Table1.
F1 score greater than 0.5 or above is considered Good. It can be observed from Table 7 that SVM is
performing more accurately than LR although LR is also giving comparable results. Hence, it can be inferred
from results that SVM and LR can detect autism more accurately in comparison of other ML models using
features dataset and they can be used for early diagnosis of autism. Figures 6 and 7 present precision and recall
curve of SVM and LR respectively. Precision and recall are the measures used to evaluate model’s
performance. Precision demonstrates

Detection Person with ASD Person without ASD

ASD detected TP FP
ASD not detected FN TN

Table 6. ASD prediction matrix.

Children dataset Adult dataset

Matrices LR SVM SVM LR
Accuracy 98% 99% 81% 78%
Precision 0.92 0.97 0.73 0.81
Recall 0.44 0.58 0.56 0.51
24 2 34 1 45 17 30 7
Confusion matrix � 2 31 � � 5 25 � � 14 35 � � 13 29 �

F1 score 0.60 0.73 0.63 0.62

Table 7. Performance of ML models in ASD detection.

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Figure 6. Precision/Recall curve of SVM.

Figure 7. Precision/Recall curve of LR.

the cases that detected autism and we predicted them correctly. Whereas recall indicates how many autism
cases model has identified correctly as relevant out of total instances that had autism.
After performing detailed analysis, it has been observed that SVM and LR models can be best fit for diagno-
ses of autism disorder in people of various age groups ranging from children to adults. We have obtained 99%
accuracy in prediction of ASD.
The performance of proposed model has also been compared with other models already proposed in the
literature. We found three most relevant studies that have proposed models for ASD detection.

Ethical statement. Hereby, I Muhammad Shoaib Farooq consciously assure that for the manuscript
“Detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children and adults using Machine Learning” the following
is fulfilled: (1) This material is the authors’ own original work, which has not been previously published
elsewhere. (2) The paper is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. (3) The paper reflects the
authors’ own research and analysis in a truthful and complete manner. (4) The paper properly credits the
meaningful contri-butions of co-authors. (5) The results are appropriately placed in the context of prior and
existing research. (6) All sources used are properly disclosed (correct citation). Literally copying of text must
be indicated as such by using quotation marks and giving proper reference. (7) All authors have been personally
and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper, and will take public responsibility for its content.
The violation of the Ethical Statement rules may result in severe consequences. I agree with the above
statements and declare that this submission follows the policies as outlined in the Guide for Authors and in the
Ethical Statement.

Discussion
Table 2 indicates the response set gathered by analysing multiple features extracted during pre-processing of
datasets. Figures 8 and 9 have been drawn based upon response R1 that showed the region to which most of
ASD patients belong and their ethnicity. It can be observed from the chart that United Kingdom (UK) is the
most affected region. Similarly, graph in Fig. 9 presents that mostly White-Europeans have ASD.
People infected with jaundice (response R8) are considered as on high risk of ASD. So, it is worthwhile to
know that whether a person is born with or without jaundice. There is a high probability that they will screen
positive for ASD if born with jaundice as shown in Fig. 10.
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 Figure 8. ASD detection as per country-of-residence.

Figure 9. ASD detection as per ethnicity.

Figure 10. ASD detection based on jaundice.

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 Application of ML in autism detection has significance due to its reliability, accuracy and quickness 1. In the
proposed model, datasets have been processed to train LR and SVM classifiers locally. Results of these
classifiers are transmitted to central server where meta classifier is trained to generate global model for autism
detection. The reason for selecting LR is to find a model that most accurately describes the relationship among
binary response set and independent variables set5. SVMs has been applied in this study as datasets had
multiple dimen-sions and are not linearly separable. SVM use hyperplane that separates ASD dataset into two
classes namely ASD effected and Non-ASD to predict target and handle overfitting as well. SVM has
separating hyper plane boundary to separate both classes7 as presented in Fig. 11.

Comparison with other studies. We have compared their work with our proposed model and summa-
rized the strengths and limitations of existing model in relation to our proposed models in Table 8. It has been
noted that our proposed model is offering comparable accuracy and effectively applicable to diagnose ASD in
patients belonging to different age groups ranging from children to adults.

Limitations of proposed model. FL is a ML technique that allows models to be trained on decentralized

data sources without transferring the data to a central server. Proposed FL based model for ASD detection
offers several advantages of data security and data privacy but it has some limitations too as listed below:
Limited model complexity In proposed architecture, FL models are trained on multiple devices with limited
processing power and storage. This limitation can make it difficult to use the proposed model for more complex
tasks that require deep neural networks or other advanced machine learning models.
Data heterogeneity The proposed model is designed to work with data that is distributed across different
devices and locations. However, this can lead to data heterogeneity, where different devices have different
types of data, making it challenging to develop models that perform well across all devices.

Figure 11. SVM mechanism of ASD Classification.

Refs Dataset Models Accuracy Limitations Strengths

LR : 93.15% The dataset was compiled from
NB:94.79% primarily autism-based collec- Used forward feature selection
1 Children 1054 instances along LR, SVM, KNN, RF SVM:93.84% tions, as a result of which there Trained and tested five ML
with 18 attributes
was quite a significant imbal- models
KNN:90.52% ance, in favor of the ASD class
5 2009 features records (toddlers, SVM, Glmboost and adaboost 85.10%, 97%, 98% Constrained sample size/ Metrics based on brain activity
children, adults) classification data set used for prediction of ASD
Does not predict the severity
of ASD. Conditions used for Makes use of six different ML
7
Children have 292 instances Naïve Bayes, SVM, LR, RF, 97.53%, 9 6.30%, 96.88% identification of ASD which based classification methods
CNN, NN
might not always necessarily and obtained high accuracy
translate to a case of ASD
Comparable accuracy has been
Children Children obtained
Records: > 200 SVM: 99% Two different datasets of
Proposed models Attributes: 22 SVM, LR Size of children dataset is very children and adults have been
Adults LR: 98% small processed
Records: > 700 Adults State of the art FL technique
Attributes: 21 SVM: 81% has been applied for ASD
prediction
LR: 78%
Table 8. A comparison of our proposed models with previous work.

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 Communication overhead In the proposed architecture, models are trained on local devices, and the
updated models need to be sent back to a central server for aggregation. This process can create significant
communication overhead, especially when dealing with a large number of devices or when the models are
updated frequently.
Lack of transparency The proposed model for ASD detection, makes it challenging to understand how
models are trained or how they make predictions. This lack of transparency can make it difficult to identify
and correct biases or errors in the models.

Conclusion
The assessment of ASD has been associated with multiple disorders recognized as features including,
behavioural, emotional, structural and mental disorders that make it difficult to predict due to non-availability
of medical tests for all features needed to detect ASD in a person. Practitioners diagnose ASD in patients by
using psycho-logical assessments and response observation. Detection process is time-consuming and complex
as symptoms are not obvious. Presently, there is no screening method that has been optimized and thoroughly
developed to specifically detect the ASD, nor is there a screening test that can accurately diagnose ASD. ML is
the most recent development that can facilitate in predicting autism more accurately saving lots of time. ML
can be help-ful in early diagnosis of ASD in patients of all ages including children and adults. In this work, we
have applied two different ML models (SVM, LR) on the dataset containing features of children and adults. It
was observed that SVM showed 81% accuracy in detecting ASD in adults and LR gave 98% accuracy in
determining ASD in children. In future, different transfer-learning models i.e. MobileNet, ResNet can also be
used in ASD detection using images dataset of autistic children for early detection of ASD with improved
accuracy. Moreover, severity of disorder can also be measured through deep learning methods in future.

Data availability
Autism image dataset for children : Cihan063, https:// www. kaggle. com/ datas ets/ cihan 063/ autism- image-
data, Accessed on: 05 June 2022. Autism Screening on Adults : and rewmvd, https:// www. kaggle. com/ datas
ets/ andre wmvd/ autism- scree ning- on- adults, Accessed on: 05 June 2022.

Received: 7 October 2022; Accepted: 25 May 2023

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Author contributions
M.S.F. and R.T. performed the measurements and analysis of the article. R.T., M.S.F. were involved in
planning and supervised the research work. Z.A., R.T. and M.S.F. processed the experimental data, performed
 the analysis, drafted the manuscript and designed the figures. M.S.F. and M.S. obtained the dataset and
characterized it. R.T. and M.S.F. performed the experimental work and worked on different analysis tools and
article repositories.

Scientific Reports | (2023) 13:9605 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35910-1 12

 M.S.F., Z.A., and R.T. aided in interpreting the results and worked on drafting the manuscript. All authors dis-
cussed the results and commented on the whole manuscript.

Funding
No Funding Available for this research.

Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information
Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to
Z.A.
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