DNAMite: Interpretable Calibrated Survival Analysis with Discretized Additive Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Van Ness, Mike, Block, Billy, Udell, Madeleine
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Van Ness, Mike
Block, Billy
Udell, Madeleine
author_facet Van Ness, Mike
Block, Billy
Udell, Madeleine
contents Survival analysis is a classic problem in statistics with important applications in healthcare. Most machine learning models for survival analysis are black-box models, limiting their use in healthcare settings where interpretability is paramount. More recently, glass-box machine learning models have been introduced for survival analysis, with both strong predictive performance and interpretability. Still, several gaps remain, as no prior glass-box survival model can produce calibrated shape functions with enough flexibility to capture the complex patterns often found in real data. To fill this gap, we introduce a new glass-box machine learning model for survival analysis called DNAMite. DNAMite uses feature discretization and kernel smoothing in its embedding module, making it possible to learn shape functions with a flexible balance of smoothness and jaggedness. Further, DNAMite produces calibrated shape functions that can be directly interpreted as contributions to the cumulative incidence function. Our experiments show that DNAMite generates shape functions closer to true shape functions on synthetic data, while making predictions with comparable predictive performance and better calibration than previous glass-box and black-box models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_05923
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DNAMite: Interpretable Calibrated Survival Analysis with Discretized Additive Models
Van Ness, Mike
Block, Billy
Udell, Madeleine
Machine Learning
Survival analysis is a classic problem in statistics with important applications in healthcare. Most machine learning models for survival analysis are black-box models, limiting their use in healthcare settings where interpretability is paramount. More recently, glass-box machine learning models have been introduced for survival analysis, with both strong predictive performance and interpretability. Still, several gaps remain, as no prior glass-box survival model can produce calibrated shape functions with enough flexibility to capture the complex patterns often found in real data. To fill this gap, we introduce a new glass-box machine learning model for survival analysis called DNAMite. DNAMite uses feature discretization and kernel smoothing in its embedding module, making it possible to learn shape functions with a flexible balance of smoothness and jaggedness. Further, DNAMite produces calibrated shape functions that can be directly interpreted as contributions to the cumulative incidence function. Our experiments show that DNAMite generates shape functions closer to true shape functions on synthetic data, while making predictions with comparable predictive performance and better calibration than previous glass-box and black-box models.
title DNAMite: Interpretable Calibrated Survival Analysis with Discretized Additive Models
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.05923