Thyroid Cancer Recurrence Prediction: A Comparison of Synthetic and Real Data

Year 2026, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 608 - 615, 15.03.2026

Emrullah Gazioğlu

https://doi.org/10.34248/bsengineering.1828346

https://izlik.org/JA93DC67BW

Abstract

Data scarcity and/or privacy constraints in medical research and many other research fields pose obstacles to the development of artificial intelligence (machine learning, deep learning) models for various studies. In this study, it has been demonstrated how synthetic data generation can provide a solution for augmenting small datasets. The Differentiated Thyroid Cancer Recurrence Dataset obtained from the UCI Machine Learning Repository was used. Large-scale synthetic data preserving the statistical characteristics of the original data was generated and class imbalance was improved. Performance evaluation was conducted with XGBoost, LightGBM, k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN) and Decision Tree (DT) algorithms. Looking at the results, it was revealed that models trained with synthetic data showed comparable or better performance than original data. Consistent performance was obtained in ensemble methods, while significant improvements were achieved in simple models. Stability analysis showed that XGBoost and LightGBM were the most consistent models.

Keywords

Synthetic data , Thyroid cancer , Recurrence prediction , Machine learning , Privacy preservation , Medical artificial intelligence

Ethical Statement

Since the dataset used in this study consists of anonymized patient records that are publicly available through the UCI Machine Learning Repository, ethics committee approval is not required.

Thanks

We thank the researchers who publicly provided the Differentiated Thyroid Cancer Recurrence dataset used in this study.

Tiroit Kanseri Nüks Tahmini: Sentetik ve Gerçek Veri Karşılaştırması

https://izlik.org/JA93DC67BW

Abstract

Tıbbi araştırmalar başta olmak üzere diğer birçok araştırma dallarında veri kıtlığı ve/veya gizlilik kısıtlamaları, çeşitli çalışmalar için yapay zekâ (makine öğrenmesi, derin öğrenme) modellerinin geliştirilmesinde engeller oluşturmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, sentetik veri üretiminin küçük veri setlerini büyütmede nasıl bir çözüm üretebileceği gösterilmiştir. UCI Makine Öğrenmesi Deposu'ndan elde edilen Farklılaşmış Tiroit Kanseri Nüks Veri Seti kullanılmıştır. Orijinal verinin istatistiksel özelliklerini koruyan büyük ölçekli sentetik veri üretilmiş ve sınıf dengesizliği iyileştirilmiştir. XGBoost, LightGBM, k-En Yakın Komşu (kEYK) ve Karar Ağacı (KA) algoritmaları ile performans değerlendirmesi yapılmıştır. Sonuçlara bakıldığında, sentetik veri ile eğitilen modellerin orijinal veri ile karşılaştırılabilir veya daha iyi performans gösterdiği ortaya çıkmıştır. Topluluk yöntemlerinde tutarlı performans, basit modellerde ise kayda değer iyileşmeler elde edilmiştir. Kararlılık analizi, XGBoost ve LightGBM'in en tutarlı modeller olduğunu göstermiştir.

Keywords

Sentetik veri , Tiroit kanseri , Nüks tahmini , Makine öğrenmesi , Gizlilik koruma , Tıbbi yapay zekâ

Ethical Statement

Bu çalışmada kullanılan veri seti, UCI Makine Öğrenmesi Deposu’ndan halka açık olarak erişilebilen, anonim hasta verilerinden oluştuğundan etik kurul onayı gerekmemektedir.

Thanks

Bu çalışmada kullanılan Farklılaşmış Tiroit Kanseri Nüks veri setini halka açık olarak sunan araştırmacılara teşekkür ederiz. Orijinal tiroit kanseri veri seti UCI Makine Öğrenmesi Deposu’nda halka açıktır (https://archive.ics.uci.edu). Sentetik veri, DataXid platformu ile üretilmiştir ve gizlilik nedeniyle halka açık değildir. Model eğitim kodları, makul talep üzerine sorumlu yazardan temin edilebilir.

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