Prognosis of prostate cancer by artificial neural networks

In this study, an artificial neural network has been devised that yields a prognostic result indicating whether patients have cancer or not using their free prostate-specific antigen, total prostate-specific antigen and age data. Though this system does not diagnose cancer conclusively, it helps the doctor in deciding whether a biopsy is necessary by providing information about whether the patient has prostate cancer or not. Data from 121 patients who were definitively diagnosed with cancer after biopsy were used in devising the system. The results of the definitive diagnoses of the patients and the results of the ANN that was performed were analysed using confusion matrix and ROC analyses. As a result of ANN, which was implemented on the basis of these analyses, success rates of 94.11% and 94.44% were achieved for prognosis of disease and validity, respectively. The ANN, which yielded these high rates of reliability, will help doctors make quick and reliable diagnoses without any risks and make it a better option to monitor patients with low prostate cancer risk on whom biopsies must not be carried out through a policy of wait and see. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.