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Hauptverfasser: Liu, Chuanhui, Wang, Xiao
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09591
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author Liu, Chuanhui
Wang, Xiao
author_facet Liu, Chuanhui
Wang, Xiao
contents This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of variational inference in latent variable models for survival analysis, emphasizing the distinctive challenges associated with applying variational methods to survival data. We identify a critical weakness in the existing methodology, demonstrating how a poorly designed variational distribution may hinder the objective of survival analysis tasks - modeling time-to-event distributions. We prove that the optimal variational distribution, which perfectly bounds the log-likelihood, may depend on the censoring mechanism. To address this issue, we propose censor-dependent variational inference (CDVI), tailored for latent variable models in survival analysis. More practically, we introduce CD-CVAE, a V-structure Variational Autoencoder (VAE) designed for the scalable implementation of CDVI. Further discussion extends some existing theories and training techniques to survival analysis. Extensive experiments validate our analysis and demonstrate significant improvements in the estimation of individual survival distributions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_09591
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Censor Dependent Variational Inference
Liu, Chuanhui
Wang, Xiao
Machine Learning
This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of variational inference in latent variable models for survival analysis, emphasizing the distinctive challenges associated with applying variational methods to survival data. We identify a critical weakness in the existing methodology, demonstrating how a poorly designed variational distribution may hinder the objective of survival analysis tasks - modeling time-to-event distributions. We prove that the optimal variational distribution, which perfectly bounds the log-likelihood, may depend on the censoring mechanism. To address this issue, we propose censor-dependent variational inference (CDVI), tailored for latent variable models in survival analysis. More practically, we introduce CD-CVAE, a V-structure Variational Autoencoder (VAE) designed for the scalable implementation of CDVI. Further discussion extends some existing theories and training techniques to survival analysis. Extensive experiments validate our analysis and demonstrate significant improvements in the estimation of individual survival distributions.
title Censor Dependent Variational Inference
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09591