Biostatistics Advance Access published online on June 5, 2009
Biostatistics, doi:10.1093/biostatistics/kxp016
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A novel approach to cancer staging: application to esophageal cancer
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA hemant.ishwaran{at}gmail.com
Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA
Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
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.
Keywords: Predicted survival; Random forests; Survival curves; TNM
Received September 29, 2008; revised March 30, 2009; accepted for publication May 8, 2009.