Predicting Pancreatic Cancer

Project Summary

Albert Antar(Biology), and Zidi Xiu (Biostatistics) spent ten weeks leveraging Duke Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data to build predictive models of Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). PDAC is the 4th leading cause of cancer deaths in the US, and is most often is diagnosed in stage IV, with a survival rate of only 1% and life expectancy measured in months. Diagnosis of PDAC is very challenging due of deep anatomical placement, and significant risk imposed by traditional biopsy. The goal of this project is to utilize EMR data to identify potential avenues for diagnosing PDAC in the early treatable stages of disease.

Themes and Categories
Health
Data+
Year
2016

Project Results

The team first constructed a patient timeline leading up to PDAC using diagnostic codes in the EMR data. They then applied a supervised topic model to the diagnosis code data, resulting in highly interpretable groups of diagnoses, and a promising predictive model for pancreatic cancer. The study team is following up with clinical colleagues in the Duke Department of Medicine to initiate further studies based on the team's work.

Download the Executive Summary (PDF)

Faculty Sponsors

Project Manager

  • Shaobo Han, post-doc, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Participants

  • Albert Antar, Duke University Biology
  • Zidi Xiu, Student Mentor, Master's student Biostatistics, Duke University

Disciplines Involved

  • Biostatistics
  • Pre-med
  • All quantitative STEM

Related People

Related Projects

Farm to Fork (Year 2)

A team of students collaborating with Duke School of Medicine's Root Causes Fresh Produce Program, community members, and physicians throughout the Duke Health network will help integrate data from food deliveries to Duke Health patients with patient health record data and other available data sources to create a dashboard that can analyze, predict, and manage the Root Causes' "Food as Medicine" program. Specific outcomes will contribute to improving the Program's quantitative evaluation of its health impact as well as efficiency and satisfaction for its patients. Students will be assisted with IRB approval and mentorship from faculty and community advisors.

Project Leads: Esko Brummel, Willis Wong

 

Melting Ice, Shifting Krill

A team of students led by researchers at the Duke Marine Lab will explore the changing distribution of krill around the Antarctic Peninsula. Krill are a key prey species in this ecosystem, supporting a number of animals including whales, seals, and penguins, but they are dependent on winter sea ice and may be in trouble as climate change progresses. Using data from acoustic zooplankton surveys, students will create maps and other products to visualize the spatial distribution of krill over the past 20 summers, then create metrics that allow us to quantify the way that krill distribution around the Antarctic Peninsula is changing as the climate shifts and ice melts. These results will be key to our understanding of the impacts of climate change on this polar ecosystem.

 

Project Lead: Douglas Nowacek

Project Manager: Amanda Lohmann

 

Data Science for Community Safety in Durham

A team of students will partner closely with the City of Durham's newly formed Community Safety Department.  The Community Safety Department's mission is to identify, implement, and evaluate new approaches to enhance public safety that may not involve a law enforcement response or the criminal justice system. The student team will (1) analyze and identify geographic and temporal patterns in 911 calls for service, (2) conceptualize and build an abstracted data pipeline and tools that would enrich currently available 911 data with other social, economic, and health-related data, (3) explore associations between areas of high call volume, indicators of mental health distress, and histories of dispossession; and (4) identify methods by which future researchers could examine connections between varied 911 incident responses (e.g. police response, unarmed response, joint police, and mental health response) and life trajectories (e.g. arrest, jail time, hospitalization, unemployment, etc.).

 

Project Lead: Greg Herschlag, Anise Van, City of Durham

Project Manager: Deekshita Saikia

 

See all Research