Although different cancer types have been investigated from the perspective of biomedical sciences, machine learning-based studies have been scant, particularly in addressing the temporal impact of brain and central nervous system (BCNS) cancer survival. The present study aims to ll this gap by proposing a machine learning methodology to investigate the temporal effects of the attributes and the levels at which they are associated with BCNS cancer survival.
Methods.Following the best practices in health analytics, the proposed methodology utilizes a variety of feature selection, data balancing, and sensitivity analysis methods to optimize the knowledge discovery process and the resultant outcomes.
Results.The ndings can potentially assist medical professionals in identifying and targeting speci c subsets of features and levels of attributes associated with sharply decreasing (or increasing) survival rates; thereby implementing better treatment options to improve the survival chances of BCNS cancer patients.
Conclusion.Although the proposed hybrid methodology is validated on a large and feature-rich BCNS cancer data set, it can be utilized to study survival prognostics of other cancer or chronic disease types.about 24,530 new brain and other nervous system cancer cases in the United States, and approximately 18,600 people lost their lives to the disease (National Cancer Institute, 2021).The term "BCNS cancers" is used to describe various forms of cancers or tumors that grow in the brain or the spinal cord, which are often fatal due to their invasive nature and the tendency to be resistant to typical surgical procedures and therapies (Liu & Zong, 2012). Although brain and other central nervous system cancers are rare, they exert a signi cant social and economic impact on the affected individuals, their families, and the community (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017). In addition, brain and other central nervous system cancers pose a huge burden on healthcare systems due to their inherently disabling effects on the patients (GBD 2016 Brain and Other CNS Cancer Collaborators, 2019). Unfortunately, BCNS cancers can emerge at any age. Nonetheless, according to data obtained from the United States Central Brain Tumor Registry (dataset from the National Program of Cancer Registries[NPCR] and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results [SEER] registries), malignant brain tumors are most prevalent among males and non-Hispanic White individuals, while benign brain tumors are most common among females and non-Hispanic Black individuals (Liu & Zong, 2012;Ostrom et al., 2019). Analysis of the SEER program data from 1978 through 2017 reveals that the BCNS cancer incidence has increased over this period, as shown in Fig. 1 (National Cancer Institute, 2021).However, between 2008 and 2017, incidence rates for malignant BCNS cancers declined annually by 0.8% for all ages combined. Unfortunately, the rates observed among children and adolescents increased annually by 0.5-0.7% over this same period (Miller et al., 2021)...