A novel approach to cancer staging: application to esophageal cancer.
A novel 3-step random forests methodology involving survival data (survival forests), ordinal data (multiclass forests), and continuous data (regression forests) is introduced for cancer staging. The methodology is illustrated for esophageal cancer using worldwide esophageal cancer collaboration data involving 4627 patients.
Ishwaran
Hemant
H
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA. hemant.ishwaran@gmail.com
Blackstone
Eugene H
EH
Apperson-Hansen
Carolyn
C
Rice
Thomas W
TW
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000556:secondary; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D056808:Biostatistics / Q000379:methods; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016019:Survival Analysis