Identifying prostate cancer and its clinical risk in asymptomatic men using machine learning of high dimensional peripheral blood flow cytometric natural killer cell subset phenotyping data

With an estimated 1.8 million new cases in 2018 alone, prostate cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the world. Catching the disease early increases the chances of survival, but this cancer remains difficult to detect. The best diagnostic test currently available measures the blood level of a protein called the prostate-specific antigen (PSA for short). Heightened amounts of PSA may mean that the patient has cancer, but 15% of individuals with prostate cancer have normal levels of the protein, and many healthy people can have high amounts of PSA. This blood test is therefore not widely accepted as a reliable diagnostic tool.