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Abstract:
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Considerable research has investigated first hitting times as models for survival and other event times. A first hitting time is the earliest time a stochastic process reaches a fixed threshold or boundary state. In the medical context, the process represents the latent health status of a subject and the threshold represents a critical level of health that triggers an adverse medical event (relapse, disease onset, death). The time scale can be calendar time or another operational measure of disease progression. Threshold regression refers to first hitting time models with regression structures that accommodate covariate data. The process, threshold parameters, and time scale all may depend on the covariates. Threshold regression methodology already has demonstrated its value in studies of infectious disease, cancer, and occupational risk.
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