A Neural Network Model for Prognostic Prediction

An important and diicult prediction task in many domains, particularly medical decision making, is that of prognosis. Prognosis presents a unique set of problems to a learning system when some of the outputs are unknown. This paper presents a new approach to prognostic prediction, using ideas from nonparametric statistics to fully utilize all of the available information in a neural architecture. The technique is applied to breast cancer prognosis, resulting in exible, accurate models that may play a role in preventing unnecessary surgeries.