Analyzing the progression of cancers

Principal Investigator

Name
Guihua Wang

Institution
The University of Texas at Dallas

Position Title
Associate Professor

Email
guihua.wang@utdallas.edu

About this CDAS Project

Study
NLST (Learn more about this study)

Project ID
NLST-1393

Initial CDAS Request Approval
Mar 5, 2025

Title
Analyzing the progression of cancers

Summary
The state transition is an essential concept for modeling the change in states, such as a patient's health states. Although the existing literature uses this concept in various decision-making models, it treats all units as a group when modeling state transitions. However, state transitions may vary across units in diverse scenarios such as patients’ cancer progression. In this study, we first develop a new Markov chain approach to capture the heterogeneous transitions of states across units. Then, we apply the new approach to a cancer setting and estimate the heterogeneous transitions of health states for patients with cancer.

Aims

(1) Understand how patient factors (e.g., demographics) affect the state transition probability.
(2) Understand how testing (e.g., CT scanning) and treatments (e.g., chemotherapy) affect the state transition probabilities.

Collaborators

NA