Weibull Regression and Machine Learning Survival Models: Methodology, Comparison, and Application to Biomedical Data Related to Cardiac Surgery

Thalytta Cavalcante, Raydonal Ospina, Víctor Leiva, Xavier Cabezas, Carlos Martin-Barreiro

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this article, we propose a comparative study between two models that can be used by researchers for the analysis of survival data: (i) the Weibull regression model and (ii) the random survival forest (RSF) model. The models are compared considering the error rate, the performance of the model through the Harrell C-index, and the identification of the relevant variables for survival prediction. A statistical analysis of a data set from the Heart Institute of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, has been carried out. In the study, the length of stay of patients undergoing cardiac surgery, within the operating room, was used as the response variable. The obtained results show that the RSF model has less error rate for the training and testing data sets, at 23.55% and 20.31%, respectively, than the Weibull model, which has an error rate of 23.82%. Regarding the Harrell C-index, we obtain the values 0.76, 0.79, and 0.76, for the RSF and Weibull models, respectively. After the selection procedure, the Weibull model contains variables associated with the type of protocol and type of patient being statistically significant at 5%. The RSF model chooses age, type of patient, and type of protocol as relevant variables for prediction. We employ the randomForestSRC package of the R software to perform our data analysis and computational experiments. The proposal that we present has many applications in biology and medicine, which are discussed in the conclusions of this work.

Original languageEnglish
Article number442
JournalBiology
Volume12
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2023

Keywords

  • Harrell index
  • Weibull model
  • binary trees
  • model diagnostics
  • non-normal regression
  • random forest
  • statistical software
  • survival statistical analysis
  • variable importance

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