A commentary on ‘The use of multilayer perceptron and radial basis function: an artificial intelligence model to predict progression of oral cancer’: correspondence

This review presents data on incidence, mortality, survival and trends in cancers of the lip, oral cavity and oropharynx using available recent data sources around the world. Oral and pharyngeal cancer, grouped together, is the sixth most common cancer in the world. The review focuses primarily on several high-risk countries in an attempt to gain insight into the geographic variations in the incidence of this cancer in the globe and to relate the high incidence in some populations to their life style. With an estimated half a million cases around the globe and the rising trends reported in some populations, particularly in the young, urgent public health measures are needed to reduce the incidence and mortality of oral and oropharyngeal cancer. Show more

Cancer is an aggressive disease with a low median survival rate. Ironically, the treatment process is long and very costly due to its high recurrence and mortality rates. Accurate early diagnosis and prognosis prediction of cancer are essential to enhance the patient's survival rate. Developments in statistics and computer engineering over the years have encouraged many scientists to apply computational methods such as multivariate statistical analysis to analyze the prognosis of the disease, and the accuracy of such analyses is significantly higher than that of empirical predictions. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning and deep learning, has found popular applications in clinical cancer research in recent years, cancer prediction performance has reached new heights. This article reviews the literature on the application of AI to cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and summarizes its advantages. We explore how AI assists cancer diagnosis and prognosis, specifically with regard to its unprecedented accuracy, which is even higher than that of general statistical applications in oncology. We also demonstrate ways in which these methods are advancing the field. Finally, opportunities and challenges in the clinical implementation of AI are discussed. Hence, this article provides a new perspective on how AI technology can help improve cancer diagnosis and prognosis, and continue improving human health in the future. Show more

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence that employs a variety of statistical, probabilistic and optimization techniques that allows computers to “learn” from past examples and to detect hard-to-discern patterns from large, noisy or complex data sets. This capability is particularly well-suited to medical applications, especially those that depend on complex proteomic and genomic measurements. As a result, machine learning is frequently used in cancer diagnosis and detection. More recently machine learning has been applied to cancer prognosis and prediction. This latter approach is particularly interesting as it is part of a growing trend towards personalized, predictive medicine. In assembling this review we conducted a broad survey of the different types of machine learning methods being used, the types of data being integrated and the performance of these methods in cancer prediction and prognosis. A number of trends are noted, including a growing dependence on protein biomarkers and microarray data, a strong bias towards applications in prostate and breast cancer, and a heavy reliance on “older” technologies such artificial neural networks (ANNs) instead of more recently developed or more easily interpretable machine learning methods. A number of published studies also appear to lack an appropriate level of validation or testing. Among the better designed and validated studies it is clear that machine learning methods can be used to substantially (15–25%) improve the accuracy of predicting cancer susceptibility, recurrence and mortality. At a more fundamental level, it is also evident that machine learning is also helping to improve our basic understanding of cancer development and progression. Show more