A Predictive Time-to-Event Modeling Approach with Longitudinal Measurements and Missing Data

An important practical problem in the survival analysis is predicting the time to a future event such as the death or failure of a subject. It is of great importance for the medical decision making to investigate how the predictor variables including repeated measurements of the same subjects are affecting the future time-to-event. Such a prediction problem is particularly more challenging due to the fact that the future values of predictor variables are unknown, and they may vary dynamically over time. In this dissertation, we consider a predictive approach based on modeling the forward intensity function. To handle the practical difficulty due to missing data in longitudinal measurements, and to accommodate observations at irregularly spaced time points, we propose a smoothed composite likelihood approach for estimations. The forward intensity function approach intrinsically incorporates the future dynamics in the predictor variables that affect the stochastic occurrence of the future event. Thus the proposed framework is advantageous and parsimonious from requiring no separated modeling step for the stochastic mechanism of the predictor variables. Our theoretical analysis establishes the validity of the forward intensity modeling approach and the smoothed composite likelihood method. To model the parameters as continuous functions of time, we introduce the penalized B-spline method into the proposed approach. Extensive simulations and real-data analyses demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed predictive approach.

Grantor dc:publisher

Temple University. Libraries

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Lili

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tang, Cheng-Yong

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Wei, William W. S.
• Han, Xu
• Chen, Yong

• Statistics
• Forward intensity
• Longitudinal measurements
• Missing data
• Predictive modeling
• Smoothed likelihood
• Survival analysis

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/3945

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/3945