Distance-Based Mapping of Disease Risk.

Jeffery, Caroline ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8023-0708, Ozonoff, Al, White, Laura Forsberg and Pagano, Marcello (2013) 'Distance-Based Mapping of Disease Risk.'. International journal of biostatistics, Vol 9, Issue 2, pp. 265-290.

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Abstract

In this article, we consider the problem of comparing the distribution of observations in a planar region to a pre-specified null distribution. Our motivation is a surveillance setting where we map locations of incident disease, aiming to monitor these data over time, to locate potential areas of high/low incidence so as to direct public health actions. We propose a non-parametric approach to distance-based disease risk mapping inspired by tomographic imaging. We consider several one-dimensional projections via the observed distribution of distances to a chosen fixed point; we then compare this distribution to that expected under the null and average these comparisons across projections to compute a relative-risk-like score at each point in the region. The null distribution can be established from historical data. Scores are displayed on the map using a color scale. In addition, we give a detailed description of the method along with some desirable theoretical properties. To further assess the performance of this method, we compare it to the widely used log ratio of kernel density estimates. As a performance metric, we evaluate the accuracy to locate simulated spatial clusters superimposed on a uniform distribution in the unit disk. Results suggest that both methods can adequately locate this increased risk but each relies on an appropriate choice of parameters. Our proposed method, distance-based mapping (DBM), can also generalize to arbitrary metric spaces and/or high-dimensional data.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The final publication is available at www.degruyter.com
Subjects:	WA Public Health > WA 20.5 Research (General) WA Public Health > Statistics. Surveys > WA 900 Public health statistics
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > International Public Health Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1515/ijb-2012-0024
Depositing User:	Helen Fletcher
Date Deposited:	25 Oct 2013 13:17
Last Modified:	06 Feb 2018 13:06
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/3389

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