Bayesian Cure Rate Modeling for Time-to-Event Data

A fully Bayesian approach in order to estimate a general family of cure rate models under the presence of covariates, see Papastamoulis and Milienos (2024) and Papastamoulis and Milienos (2024b) . The promotion time can be modelled (a) parametrically using typical distributional assumptions for time to event data (including the Weibull, Exponential, Gompertz, log-Logistic distributions), or (b) semiparametrically using finite mixtures of distributions. In both cases, user-defined families of distributions are allowed under some specific requirements. Posterior inference is carried out by constructing a Metropolis-coupled Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler, which combines Gibbs sampling for the latent cure indicators and Metropolis-Hastings steps with Langevin diffusion dynamics for parameter updates. The main MCMC algorithm is embedded within a parallel tempering scheme by considering heated versions of the target posterior distribution.