Prediction of minimal residual disease in pediatric ALL: Comparison and evaluation of different mathematical methods applied to data from the ALL-BFM 2000 trial

In pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most important prognostic factor for the risk of relapse is the evaluation of minimal residual disease (MRD) at defined timepoints. The results of MRD analyses are not available at diagnosis to guide selection of the optimal treatment intensity already early on. In trial ALL BFM 2000, multi-level patient data were collected and are now used to develop models to predict MRD. Different methods of model developing like neural networks, decision trees, genetic algorithms and support vector mashines are compared focusing on their potential and their accuracy in pre…