Deep Semisupervised Multitask Learning Model and Its Interpretability for Survival Analysis

Survival analysis is a commonly used method in the medical field to analyze and predict the time of events. In medicine, this approach plays a key role in determining the course of treatment, developing new drugs, and improving hospital procedures. Most of the existing work in this area has addressed the problem by making strong assumptions about the underlying stochastic process. However, these assumptions are usually violated in the real-world data. This paper proposed a semisupervised multitask learning (SSMTL) method based on deep learning for survival analysis with or without competing risks. SSMTL transforms the survival analysis problem into a multitask learning problem that includes semisupervised learning and multipoint survival probability prediction. The distribution of survival times and the relationship between covariates and outcomes were modeled directly without any assumptions. Semisupervised loss and ranking loss are used to deal with censored data and the prior knowledge of the nonincreasing trend of the survival probability. Additionally, the importance of prognostic factors is determined, and the time-dependent and nonlinear effects of these factors on survival outcomes are visualized. The prediction performance of SSMTL is better than that of previous models in settings with or without competing risks, and the effects of predictors are successfully described. This study is of great significance for the exploration and application of deep learning methods involving medical structured data and provides an effective deep-learning-based method for survival analysis with complex-structured clinical data.