Method for predicting the future occurrence of clinically occult or non- existent medical conditions

摘要

A method is presented for evaluating data to predict the future occurrence of a medical condition that is presently clinically occult or which has not yet occurred. Specifically, the method uses a neural network to analyze and interpret DNA flow cytometric histograms. A first set of DNA histograms taken from tumors from patients having known relapse rates are used to train the neural network, an then the trained network is applied to predict the relapse rates of patients using DNA histograms of tumors from those patients. Prognosis according to this method can be performed using only diploid histograms, using only aneuploid histograms, or using a combination of diploid and aneuploid histograms.