Random survival forests

Understand

We introduce random survival forests, a random forests method for the analysis of right-censored survival data.

• New survival splitting rules for growing survival trees are introduced, as is a new missing data algorithm for imputing missing data.
• A conservation-of-events principle for survival forests is introduced and used to define ensemble mortality, a simple interpretable measure of mortality that can be used as a predicted outcome.
• Several illustrative examples are given, including a case study of the prognostic implications of body mass for individuals with coronary artery disease.