A Novel Statistical Metric for the Classification of Thalassemia Diseases in the City of Erbil

Thalassemia stands as one of the prevailing diseases in the contemporary era. It is characterized by an inherited blood disorder marked by low hemoglobin levels and a reduced count of red blood cells compared to the typical norm. This condition arises from a deficiency in hemoglobin, the crucial substance within red blood cells responsible for oxygen transport. This research endeavors to employ the concept of distance measurement between two variables to explore their similarity or dissimilarity. The primary objective of this study is to compare three distinct distance calculation methods: the Euclidean distance, Pearson Correlation distance, and a novel approach presented here, the Weighted Correlation distance, which relies on minimum distances. Data for this study was collected at Erbil Teaching Hospital (Komari) and encompassed 234 cases. The analysis revealed that the minimum distance between RBCC and HB, when calculated using the Euclidean distance, and the minimum distance between RBCCH and HB, when assessed through Pearson Correlation distance, were both surpassed by the performance of the proposed method. This improvement was attributed to the minimum distance found between RBCD and HB in the new approach.