2025/11/03 by Lang Lang, Lang, Lang, Yao Zhao +5
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Decision Sciences · Medicine · #Esophageal Cancer Research and Treatment #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Gene expression and cancer classification #Meta-analysis and systematic reviews #Methodology (stat.ME)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.01785
openalex publication_date 2025/11/03 · openalex created_date 2025/11/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Individual patient data (IPD) from oncology trials are essential for reliable evidence synthesis but are rarely publicly available, necessitating reconstruction from published Kaplan-Meier (KM) curves. Existing reconstruction methods suffer from digitization errors, unrealistic uniform censoring assumptions, and the inability to recover subgroup-level IPD when only aggregate statistics are available. We developed RESOLVE-IPD, a unified computational framework that enables high-fidelity IPD reconstruction and uncertainty-aware subgroup meta-analysis to address these limitations. RESOLVE-IPD comprises two components. The first component, High-Fidelity IPD Reconstruction, integrates the VEC-KM and CEN-KM modules: VEC-KM extracts precise KM coordinates and explicit censoring marks from vectorized figures, minimizing digitization error, while CEN-KM corrects overlapping censor symbols and eliminates the uniform censoring assumption. The second component, Uncertainty-Aware Subgroup Recovery, employs the MAPLE (Marginal Assignment of Plausible Labels and Evidence Propagation) algorithm to infer patient-level subgroup labels consistent with published summary statistics (e.g., hazard ratio, median overall survival) when subgroup KM curves are unavailable. MAPLE generates ensembles of mathematically valid labelings, facilitating a propagating meta-analysis that quantifies and reflects uncertainty from subgroup reconstruction. RESOLVE-IPD was validated through a subgroup meta-analysis of four trials in advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, focusing on the programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-low population. RESOLVE-IPD enables accurate IPD reconstruction and robust, uncertainty-aware subgroup meta-analyses, strengthening the reliability and transparency of secondary evidence synthesis in precision oncology.