A Logic Tensor Network-Based Neurosymbolic Framework for Explainable Diabetes Prediction

Neurosymbolic AI is an emerging paradigm that combines neural network learning capabilities with the structured reasoning capacity of symbolic systems. Although machine learning has achieved cutting-edge outcomes in diverse fields, including healthcare, agriculture, and environmental science, it has potential limitations. Machine learning and neural models excel at identifying intricate data patterns, yet they often lack transparency, depend on large labelled datasets, and face challenges with logical reasoning and tasks that require explainability. These challenges reduce their reliability in high-stakes applications such as healthcare. To address these limitations, we propose a hybrid framework that integrates symbolic knowledge expressed in First-Order Logic into neural learning via a Logic Tensor Network (LTN). In this framework, expert-defined medical rules are embedded as logical axioms with learnable thresholds. As a result, the model gains predictive power, interpretability, and explainability through reasoning over the logical rules. We have utilized this neurosymbolic method for predicting diabetes by employing the Pima Indians Diabetes Dataset. Our experimental setup evaluates the LTN-based model against several conventional methods, including Support Vector Machines (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), Random Forest Classifiers (RF), Naive Bayes (NB), and a Standalone Neural Network (NN). The findings demonstrate that the neurosymbolic framework not only surpasses traditional models in predictive accuracy but also offers improved explainability and robustness. Notably, the LTN-based neurosymbolic framework achieves an excellent balance between recall and precision, along with a higher AUC-ROC score. These results underscore its potential for trustworthy medical diagnostics. This work highlights how integrating symbolic reasoning with data-driven models can bridge the gap between explainability, interpretability, and performance, offering a promising direction for AI systems in domains where both accuracy and explainability are critical.