Estimation of Dormant Cell Population in Cancer Patients: A New Approach

The branching processes form a configuration for modeling tumor cells. Faced with unobserved data on dormant cells, inference based on the branching process is not easy to achieve. In large populations, we construct a new framework for estimating dormant cells and tumor dormancy rates. This inference uses of control theory is based on deterministic process statistics approximating branching process in large populations. Precisely, we use an auxiliary system called an observer whose solutions tend exponentially towards those of the limit deterministic model. This observer uses only available measurable data on tumor cells and provides estimates of the number of dormant cells. In addition, the constructed observer does not use the parameter of the generally unknown tumor dormancy rate. We also derive a method to estimate it using the estimated states. We apply this estimation method using simulated data from the branching process.