METHOD OF PREDICTING CARCINOMIC METASTASES

A method of predicting the locations of the lymph nodes most at risk of metastasis from a primary tumor of, e.g., the neck or head. The method utilizes data on the location of the primary tumor and the identity of lymph nodes to which the cancer has already spread. The data are transformated by a weighted multidimensional scaling (WMDS) process; points representing clusters of lymph nodes are placed in an imaginary mathematical space such that distances between points in that space are proportional to differences in the occurrence frequency of metastases.