Survival prediction for bladder cancer using machine learning: development of BlaCaSurv online survival prediction application

Background: Bladder cancer is the most common cancer of the urinary system among the American population and it is the fourth most common cause of cancer morbidity and the eight most common cause of cancer mortality among men. Using machine learning algorithms, we predict the five-year survival among bladder cancer patients and deploy the best performing algorithm as a web application for survival prediction. Methods: Microscopically confirmed adult bladder cancer patients were included from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database (2000-2017) and randomly split into training and test datasets (70/30 ratio). Five machine learning algorithms (logistic regression, support vector machine, gradient boosting, random forest, and K nearest neighbor) were trained on features to predict five-year survival. The algorithms were compared with performance metrics and the best performing algorithm was deployed as a web application. Results: A total of 52,529 patients were included in our study. The gradient boosting algorithm was the best performer in terms of predictive ability and discrimination. It was deployed as the survival prediction web application named BlaCaSurv (https://blacasurv.herokuapp.com/). Conclusions: We tested several machine learning algorithms and developed a web application for predicting five-year survival for bladder cancer patients. This application can be used as a supplementary prognostic tool to clinical decision making.