Identification of cancer diagnosis estimation models using evolutionary algorithms: A case study for breast cancer, melanoma, and cancer in the respiratory system

In this paper we present results of empirical research work done on the data based identification of estimation models for cancer diagnoses: Based on patients' data records including standard blood parameters, tumor markers, and information about the diagnosis of tumors we have trained mathematical models for estimating cancer diagnoses. Several data based modeling approaches implemented in HeuristicLab have been applied for identifying estimators for selected cancer diagnoses: Linear regression, k-nearest neighbor learning, artificial neural networks, and support vector machines (all optimized using evolutionary algorithms) as well as genetic programming. The investigated diagnoses of breast cancer, melanoma, and respiratory system cancer can be estimated correctly in up to 81%, 74%, and 91% of the analyzed test cases, respectively; without tumor markers up to 75%, 74%, and 87% of the test samples are correctly estimated, respectively.