Dr. Answer AI for prostate cancer: Clinical outcome prediction model and service

PLoS One. 2020 Aug 5;15(8):e0236553. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236553. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

Objectives: The importance of clinical outcome prediction models using artificial intelligence (AI) is being emphasized owing to the increasing necessity of developing a clinical decision support system (CDSS) employing AI. Therefore, in this study, we proposed a "Dr. Answer" AI software based on the clinical outcome prediction model for prostate cancer treated with radical prostatectomy.

Methods: The Dr. Answer AI was developed based on a clinical outcome prediction model, with a user-friendly interface. We used 7,128 clinical data of prostate cancer treated with radical prostatectomy from three hospitals. An outcome prediction model was developed to calculate the probability of occurrence of 1) tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) staging, 2) extracapsular extension, 3) seminal vesicle invasion, and 4) lymph node metastasis. Random forest and k-nearest neighbors algorithms were used, and the proposed system was compared with previous algorithms.

Results: Random forest exhibited good performance for TNM staging (recall value: 76.98%), while k-nearest neighbors exhibited good performance for extracapsular extension, seminal vesicle invasion, and lymph node metastasis (80.24%, 98.67%, and 95.45%, respectively). The Dr. Answer AI software consisted of three primary service structures: 1) patient information, 2) clinical outcome prediction, and outcomes according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guideline.

Conclusion: The proposed clinical outcome prediction model could function as an effective CDSS, supporting the decisions of the physicians, while enabling the patients to understand their treatment outcomes. The Dr. Answer AI software for prostate cancer helps the doctors to explain the treatment outcomes to the patients, allowing the patients to be more confident about their treatment plans.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Decision Support Systems, Clinical*
  • Humans
  • Lymphatic Metastasis
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Neoplasm Invasiveness / genetics
  • Probability
  • Prognosis*
  • Prostate / pathology
  • Prostate / surgery
  • Prostate-Specific Antigen / blood
  • Prostatectomy
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / blood
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / epidemiology*
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / physiopathology
  • Prostatic Neoplasms / therapy
  • Seminal Vesicles / pathology
  • Seminal Vesicles / surgery
  • Treatment Outcome

Substances

  • Prostate-Specific Antigen

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2018-2-00861, Intelligent SW Technology Development for Medical Data Analysis). LifeSemantics provided support in the form of salaries for Chanjung Lee, Sejin Nam, Dongbum Kim. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.