Machine Learning Algorithms for Predicting the Recurrence of Stage IV Colorectal Cancer After Tumor Resection

The aim of this study is to explore the feasibility of using machine learning (ML) technology to predict postoperative recurrence risk among stage IV colorectal cancer patients. Four basic ML algorithms were used for prediction—logistic regression, decision tree, GradientBoosting and lightGBM. The research samples were randomly divided into a training group and a testing group at a ratio of 8:2. 999 patients with stage 4 colorectal cancer were included in this study. In the training group, the GradientBoosting model’s AUC value was the highest, at 0.881. The Logistic model’s AUC value was the lowest, at 0.734. The GradientBoosting model had the highest F1_score (0.912). In the test group, the AUC Logistic model had the lowest AUC value (0.692). The GradientBoosting model’s AUC value was 0.734, which can still predict cancer progress. However, the gbm model had the highest AUC value (0.761), and the gbm model had the highest F1_score (0.974). The GradientBoosting model and the gbm model performed better than the other two algorithms. The weight matrix diagram of the GradientBoosting algorithm shows that chemotherapy, age, LogCEA, CEA and anesthesia time were the five most influential risk factors for tumor recurrence. The four machine learning algorithms can each predict the risk of tumor recurrence in patients with stage IV colorectal cancer after surgery. Among them, GradientBoosting and gbm performed best. Moreover, the GradientBoosting weight matrix shows that the five most influential variables accounting for postoperative tumor recurrence are chemotherapy, age, LogCEA, CEA and anesthesia time.