Abstract
This work performs an in-depth study of the impact of distance functions on K-Nearest Neighbours imputation of heterogeneous datasets. Missing data is generated at several percentages, on a large benchmark of 150 datasets (50 continuous, 50 categorical and 50 heterogeneous datasets) and data imputation is performed using different distance functions (HEOM, HEOM-R, HVDM, HVDM-R, HVDM-S, MDE and SIMDIST) and k values (1, 3, 5 and 7). The impact of distance functions on kNN imputation is then evaluated in terms of classification performance, through the analysis of a classifier learned from the imputed data, and in terms of imputation quality, where the quality of the reconstruction of the original values is assessed. By analysing the properties of heterogeneous distance functions over continuous and categorical datasets individually, we then study their behaviour over heterogeneous data. We discuss whether datasets with different natures may benefit from different distance functions and to what extent the component of a distance function that deals with missing values influences such choice. Our experiments show that missing data has a significant impact on distance computation and the obtained results provide guidelines on how to choose appropriate distance functions depending on data characteristics (continuous, categorical or heterogeneous datasets) and the objective of the study (classification or imputation tasks).

Abstract
The performance evaluation of imputation algorithms often involves the generation of missing values. Missing values can be inserted in only one feature (univariate configuration) or in several features (multivariate configuration) at different percentages (missing rates) and according to distinct missing mechanisms, namely, missing completely at random, missing at random, and missing not at random. Since the missing data generation process defines the basis for the imputation experiments (configuration, missing rate, and missing mechanism), it is essential that it is appropriately applied; otherwise, conclusions derived from ill-defined setups may be invalid. The goal of this paper is to review the different approaches to synthetic missing data generation found in the literature and discuss their practical details, elaborating on their strengths and weaknesses. Our analysis revealed that creating missing at random and missing not at random scenarios in datasets comprising qualitative features is the most challenging issue in the related work and, therefore, should be the focus of future work in the field.

Abstract
Background: Recurrence is an important cornerstone in breast cancer behavior, intrinsically related to mortality. In spite of its relevance, it is rarely recorded in the majority of breast cancer datasets, which makes research in its prediction more difficult. Objectives: To evaluate the performance of machine learning techniques applied to the prediction of breast cancer recurrence. Material and Methods: Revision of published works that used machine learning techniques in local and open source databases between 1997 and 2014. Results: The revision showed that it is difficult to obtain a representative dataset for breast cancer recurrence and there is no consensus on the best set of predictors for this disease. High accuracy results are often achieved, yet compromising sensitivity. The missing data and class imbalance problems are rarely addressed and most often the chosen performance metrics are inappropriate for the context. Discussion and Conclusions: Although different techniques have been used, prediction of breast cancer recurrence is still an open problem. The combination of different machine learning techniques, along with the definition of standard predictors for breast cancer recurrence seem to be the main future directions to obtain better results.

Abstract
Brain-Computer Interface systems based on motor imagery are able to identify an individual's intent to initiate control through the classification of encephalography patterns. Correctly classifying such patterns is instrumental and strongly depends in a robust machine learning block that is able to properly process the features extracted from a subject's encephalograms. The main objective of this work is to provide an overall view on machine learning stages, aiming to answer the following question: "What are the steps in the classification process that we should worry about?". The obtained results suggest that future research in the field should focus on two main aspects: exploring techniques for dimensionality reduction, in particular, supervised linear approaches, and evaluating adequate validation schemes to allow a more precise interpretation of results.

Abstract
The quality of mammography images is essential for the diagnosis of breast cancer and image imputation has become a popular technique to overcome noise, artifacts, and missing data to aid in the diagnosis of diseases. In this paper, we assess the performance of six imputation methodologies for the reconstruction of missing pixels in different morphologies in mammography images. The images included in this study are collected from four public datasets (CBIS-DDSM, Mini-MIAS, INbreast, and CSAW) and the imputation results are evaluated through the mean absolute error (MAE) and structural similarity index measure (SSIM). This study goes beyond the traditional evaluation of imputation algorithms, analyzing imputation quality, morphology preservation and classification performance. The effects of imputation on the morphology of cancer lesions are of utmost importance since it lays the foundation for physicians to interpret and analyze the imputation results. The results show that DIP is the most promising methodology for higher missing pixel rates, morphology preservation, and classifying malignant and benign images.

Abstract
With the increased use of machine learning algorithms to make decisions which impact people's lives, it is of extreme importance to ensure that predictions do not prejudice subgroups of the population with respect to sensitive attributes such as race or gender. Discrimination occurs when the probability of a positive outcome changes across privileged and unprivileged groups defined by the sensitive attributes. It has been shown that this bias can be originated from imbalanced data contexts where one of the classes contains a much smaller number of instances than the other classes. It is also important to identify the nature of the imbalanced data, including the characteristics of the minority classes' distribution. This paper presents FAWOS: a Fairness-Aware oversampling algorithm which aims to attenuate unfair treatment by handling sensitive attributes' imbalance. We categorize different types of datapoints according to their local neighbourhood with respect to the sensitive attributes, identifying which are more difficult to learn by the classifiers. In order to balance the dataset, FAWOS oversamples the training data by creating new synthetic datapoints using the different types of datapoints identified. We test the impact of FAWOS on different learning classifiers and analyze which can better handle sensitive attribute imbalance. Empirically, we observe that this algorithm can effectively increase the fairness results of the classifiers while not neglecting the classification performance. Source code can be found at: https://github.com/teresalazar13/FAWOS