How to aggregate uncertain and incomplete cognitive evaluation information in lung cancer treatment plan selection? A method based on Dempster-Shafer theory

Abstract

Multidisciplinary team is beneficial to select an appropriate treatment plan for a patient with lung cancer, where the collected cognitive evaluation information may be uncertain and incomplete. This study dedicates to dealing with a treatment plan selection problem of lung cancer through the multi-criteria analysis with generalised probabilistic linguistic term sets (GPLTSs) which are powerful in describing the uncertainty and incompleteness of subjective evaluations. The existing generalised probabilistic linguistic information aggregation method is based on the Dempster-Shafer combination rule, but the combined results may be counterintuitive. In addition, the GPLTS may not meet the conditions of applying the Dempster-Shafer combination rule. To make up for these gaps, a new combination rule based on Dempster-Shafer theory is introduced. Then, a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process with generalised probabilistic linguistic information based on the proposed combination rule is formed and applied to select the treatment plans of lung cancer associated with a multidisciplinary team. Through the sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis, the advantages of the proposed method are highlighted.