A pilot study using kernelled support tensor machine for distant failure prediction in lung SBRT

•A kernelled support tensor machine (KSTM) is proposed to assess SBRT for NSCLC patients.•The KSTM based model uses native tumor imaging as input.•The KSTM trains the classification hyper-plane in an adaptive feature tensor space.•An iterative procedure with the proof of convergence for KSTM is developed.•The KSTM achieved the highest prediction results among the seven investigated methods.