Machine learning and cancer survival: analysis of the Registro Hospitalar de Câncer do Estado de São Paulo

To compare the performance of different Survival Machine Learning (SML) algorithms in predicting the survival of cancer patients.

Data from the Registro Hospitalar de Câncer do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo State Cancer Registry Hospital) were used, covering the five most incident types of cancer (breast, prostate, lung, colorectal and cervix). Six algorithms were evaluated: Gradient Boosting Survival (GBS), Random Survival Forest (RSF), Support Vector Machine Survival (SVM-Survival), XGBoost Cox, XGBoost Accelerated Failure Time (AFT), and LightGBM. Performance was measured by the Concordance Index (C-Index), C-Index IPCW and Integrated Brier Score (IBS) metrics.

The XGBoost AFT model showed the best C-Index results for breast (0.7845), lung (0.7368), colorectal (0.7618), and cervix (0.7726), while GBS was superior for prostate (0.7574). Clinical staging was consistently the most important variable, according to the explainability analysis.

The SML algorithms showed good predictive performance, regardless of cancer type, sample size and censoring proportion. These models show potential for subsidizing cancer planning and supporting strategic decisions in the organization of cancer care networks.