Fig. 1

Diagram of transition states in Markov model. In the designed Markov model, we used 3 transition states of “no cancer”, “alive with cancer” and “death” to simulate the disease process of the patient after radiotherapy. 1-year cycle length was used, and the Markov model will be cycled until the patient’s 77-year-old (Chinese life expectancy). For each cycle, if the patient was in the state of “no cancer”, s/he might stay in the state of “no cancer”, develop into the state of “alive with cancer” or develop into the state of “death”; If the patient was in the state of “alive with cancer”, s/he might stay in the state of “alive with cancer” or develop into the state of “death”; If the patient was in the absorbing state “death”, the loop operation would be terminated