title: A novel approach to cancer staging: application to esophageal cancer.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA. hemant.ishwaran@gmail.com
authors.forename: Hemant
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ishwaran
authors.forename: Eugene H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Blackstone
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Apperson-Hansen
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Rice
mesh_terms: 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