S3LR: Novel feature selection approach for Microarray-Based breast cancer recurrence prediction

Abstract

Enhancing the accuracy of breast cancer recurrence prediction is crucial, mainly when dealing with genomics data, which presents challenges such as high dimensionality, noise, non-linearity, and limited sample sizes. This paper introduces Semi-Supervised Survival Laplacian Regression (S3LR), a novel feature selection algorithm designed to improve breast cancer recurrence prediction by effectively handling censored, event, and unlabeled data. S3LR modifies the Laplacian Score (LS) by incorporating a distance matrix to calculate the weight matrix, and it integrates heuristic and metaheuristic optimization algorithms to optimize the weighted matrix. These enhancements refine feature selection and overall performance. In our evaluations using three datasets and comparisons with state-of-the-art techniques, S3LR combined with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) demonstrates significant improvements in C-index and mean absolute error (MAE). Average C-index values reach 68.80 %, 59.49 %, and 67.66 %, with average MAE values of 15.98, 7.87, and 8.65 months, respectively. These results showcase S3LR's effectiveness in predicting recurrence, even with censored data, for more precise and reliable outcomes. Furthermore, the framework's versatility extends beyond breast cancer and can readily be applied to address other survival and recurrence problems.