Mining Association Rules in the BCCA Liver Cancer Data Set.

The objective of this study is to apply data mining techniques to determine factors that are commonly associated with liver cancer incidence, using an anonymized data set of 6064 patients from the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA). The association rules indicate that in BC the patient demographic factors associated with increased liver cancer include: age ranges 60-69, male gender, and geographic location in the Greater Vancouver area. The main factors associated with decreased survivability in BC were being male and in the age range 70-79.

Assessing the feasibility of data mining techniques for early liver cancer detection.

The objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of a data mining association analysis technique, the FP Growth algorithm, for the detection of associations of liver cancer, geographic location and demographic of patients. For the research, we are planning to use data extracted from electronic health record systems of three healthcare organizations in different geographic locations (Canada, Taiwan and Mongolia). The data are arranged into 'transactions' which contain a set of data items focused around cancer diseases, geographic locations and patient demographics.