Optimal Estimation for the Functional Cox Model

What is it about?

Functional covariates are common in many medical, biodemographic and neuroimaging studies. The aim of this paper is to study functional Cox models with right-censored data in the presence of both functional and scalar covariates. We study the asymptotic properties of the maximum partial likelihood estimator and establish the asymptotic normality and efficiency of the estimator of the finite-dimensional estimator. Under the framework of reproducing kernel Hilbert space, the estimator of the coefficient function for a functional covariate achieves the minimax optimal rate of convergence under a weighted L2-risk. This optimal rate is determined jointly by the censoring scheme, the reproducing kernel and the covariance kernel of the functional covariates. Implementation of the estimation approach and the selection of the smoothing parameter are discussed in detail. The finite sample performance is illustrated by simulated examples and a real application.

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Why is it important?

Functional Cox model is relatively new and this is the first paper that develops theory for such a model.