A novel deep autoencoder based survival analysis approach for microarray dataset

We fine-tuned our autoencoder model on RNA-seq data of three datasets to train the weights in our survival prediction model, then using different samples in each dataset for testing the model. The results show that the proposed AutoCox and AutoRandom algorithms based on our feature selection autoencoder approach have better concordance index results comparing the most recent deep learning approaches when applied to each dataset. Each gene resulting from our autoencoder model weight is computed. The weights show the degree of effect for each gene upon the survival probability. For instance, four of the most survival-related experimentally validated genes are on the top of our discovered genes weights list, including PTPRG, MYST1, BG683264, and AK094562 for the breast cancer gene expression dataset. Our approach improves the survival analysis in terms of speeding up the process, enhancing the prediction accuracy, and reducing the error rate in the estimated survival probability.