Predicting maximal oxygen uptake using deep learning

Maximal oxygen uptake, or VO2max, is an external parameter that is affected by things like how many red blood cells the body has, how adapted the muscles are to distance running, and how much blood the heart can pump. It is measured as milliliters of oxygen used in one minute per kilogram of body weight. In a laboratory, it is calculated by measuring the volume (V) of oxygen (O2) that the body consumes while running on a treadmill which is the most accurate way. However, because of the serious drawbacks of direct measurement, a lot of studies have been conducted using machine learning methods to predict VO2max. The purpose of this study is to build new VO2max prediction models using deep learning (DL). The dataset has been split into training and test data using 70-30%, 80-20% split ratio, and 10-fold cross-validation. For comparison purposes, VO2max prediction models based on Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Single Decision Tree (SDT) have also been developed. The performance of the prediction models has been evaluated using Standard Error of Estimate (SEE) and Multiple Correlation Coefficient (R). As a conclusion, DL can be used safely in VO2max prediction domain.