# Time-Conditioned and Multi-Time Survival Prediction from 2D PET/CT Projections in Lung Cancer Source: [Time-Conditioned and Multi-Time Survival Prediction from 2D PET/CT Projections in Lung Cancer]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2026-06-12T05:00:14.585Z Authors: Ashish Chauhan, Sambit Tarai, Elin Lundstr\\"om, Johan \\"Ofverstedt, H{\\aa}kan Ahlstr\\"om, Joel Kullberg Published: 2026-06-10T14:34:01.000Z ## Abstract Accurate prediction of overall survival (OS) from positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) can support personalized treatment and follow-up strategies in oncology. However, the impact of temporal modeling on imaging-based survival prediction remains insufficiently explored. We investigate how different temporal formulations influence survival prediction by developing two complementary approaches: Attention-guided Time-Conditioned Survival (ATCS) and Multi-Time Survival (MTS). We retrospectively analyzed pre-treatment PET/CT images from 848 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including 556 for model development and 292 for held-out testing. A previously proposed Time-Conditioned Survival (TCS) model was used as a baseline. Models were trained using 5-fold cross-validation and evaluated on the test set using time-dependent area under the curve (AUC) at 6-month intervals from 0.5 to 5 years. Both ATCS and MTS outperformed the baseline TCS model, achieving mean AUCs of 0.794 and 0.793, respectively, compared to 0.767. ATCS performed better at earlier time points (0.5-3 years), whereas MTS performed better at later intervals (3.5-5 years). Combining tumor-specific and tissue-wise PET/CT features improved performance over either input alone. Finer temporal discretization improved short-term prediction, while coarser intervals provided more stable long-term estimates. These findings demonstrate that temporal modeling and input design influence PET/CT-based survival prediction. The proposed approaches enable time-specific survival estimation from pre-treatment imaging and may support improved risk stratification and clinical decision-making. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. - [Overall survival prediction on NSCLC PET/CT (test)](): Overall Survival Prediction; NSCLC PET/CT (test); AUC (0.5y): 0.751. - [Overall Survival Prediction on NSCLC PET/CT](): Overall Survival Prediction; NSCLC PET/CT overall survival prediction; AUC (0.5-year): 0.751. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()