title: Disease-free survival after hepatic resection in hepatocellular carcinoma patients: a prediction approach using artificial neural network.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  A database for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients who had received hepatic resection was used to develop prediction models for 1-, 3- and 5-year disease-free survival based on a set of clinical parameters for this patient group.
  
  
  METHODS
  The three prediction models included an artificial neural network (ANN) model, a logistic regression (LR) model, and a decision tree (DT) model. Data for 427, 354 and 297 HCC patients with histories of 1-, 3- and 5-year disease-free survival after hepatic resection, respectively, were extracted from the HCC patient database. From each of the three groups, 80% of the cases (342, 283 and 238 cases of 1-, 3- and 5-year disease-free survival, respectively) were selected to provide training data for the prediction models. The remaining 20% of cases in each group (85, 71 and 59 cases in the three respective groups) were assigned to validation groups for performance comparisons of the three models. Area under receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC) was used as the performance index for evaluating the three models.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The ANN model outperformed the LR and DT models in terms of prediction accuracy. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using ANNs in medical decision support systems for predicting disease-free survival based on clinical databases in HCC patients who have received hepatic resection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Healthcare Administration and Medical Informatics, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wen-Hsien
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: King-Teh
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Hong-Yaw
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Te-Wei
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: Herng-Chia
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Chiu
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D019540:Area Under Curve; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000601:surgery*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003663:Decision Trees; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000601:surgery*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000601:surgery*; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D012372:ROC Curve; D016896:Treatment Outcome