Specific consideration of delays in parametric time-to-event (survival) models

In survival analysis, events sometimes only start to occur after a certain delay since entry time and this delay period might vary for different treatments or groups. While parametric delay models like the three-parameter Weibull distribution might adequately describe this process the estimation of delay via standard maximum likelihood is severely biased in small samples. Some alternative estimation methods have been proposed like a bias-correction for maximum likelihood or the maximum product of spacings estimation method. In this project, we investigate the performance of these methods for parametric significance tests for delay in a two group setting. To this end, we develop the R-package incubate on CRAN that implements all discussed methods.

Involved scientists 

• Dipl. Math. Matthias Kuhn 
• Jonas Breidenstein (Medical doctoral student) 
• Prof Dr Ingo Roeder

Publications

In preparation

Funding

IMB budget