PREDICTION OF LYMPH-NODE METASTASIS IN GASTRIC-CANCER PATIENTS WITH NEURAL NETWORKS

Artificial neural networks are a kind of pattern classifiers, with gro wing acceptance in medical and biological research. We applied a singl e layer perceptron to data of 4302 patients from National Cancer Centr e in Tokyo and compared the results to the Maruyama diagnostic system (MDS) and classic statistical analysis with logistic regression. While logistic regression reached no sensitivity and a specificity of 1.00 in median, MDS had a sensitivity of 0.74 and a specificity of 0.75 in median. The perceptron reached a median sensitivity of 0.83 and a medi an specificity of 0.71.