The role of Absorbing Markov Chains in childhood cancer

Abstract

Absorbing Markov Chains are an important mathematical tool used for different applications in science. On the other hand, cancer and its metastases in children have a significant impact on health due to their degree of lethality. Therefore, the aim of this work is to model the metastatic pathways of the main childhood cancers worldwide. The probabilities of generating metastases, from a primary site to secondary and tertiary sites, were characterized by constructing a directed graph and the associated transition matrix. In addition, the time of absorption and the probabilities of absorption by each absorbing state were calculated.