Abstract: Objective To investigate the application of radial basis function (RBF) network in assisting the forecast of postoperative survival time in patients with colorectal cancer. MethodsUsing RBF network, the relationship between the indexes and postoperative survival time of colorectal cancer patients was studied. Data were collected from patients during follow-up visits, and randomly divided into a training set and a testing set at a ratio of 5.5∶1, in order to establish an RBF network forecasting postoperative survival time in patients with colorectal cancer. ResultsThe established RBF network was applied for forecasting the data in the training set, with a precision of 100%. It could also be adopted to forecast the data in the testing set, with high precision. ConclusionsRBF network can simulate the relationship between the input indexes and postoperative survival time of colorectal cancer patients, and overcome the disadvantages of BP network.