Vine Copulas for Analyzing Multivariate Conditional Dependencies in Electronic Health Records Data

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Samad, Manar D., Hou, Yina, Witherow, Megan A., Diawara, Norou
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866915926400565248
author Samad, Manar D.
Hou, Yina
Witherow, Megan A.
Diawara, Norou
author_facet Samad, Manar D.
Hou, Yina
Witherow, Megan A.
Diawara, Norou
contents Electronic health records (EHR) store hundreds of demographic and laboratory variables from large patient populations. Traditional statistical methods have limited capacity in processing mixed-type data (continuous, ordinal) and capturing non-linear relationships in large multivariate data when oversimplified assumptions are made about the distribution (e.g., Gaussian) of disparate variables in EHR data. This paper addresses the limitations mentioned above by repurposing the vine copula method, which is primarily used to synthesize a multivariate distribution from many bivariate cumulative distribution functions (copulas). Vine copulas produce tree structures that represent bivariate conditional dependencies at varying hierarchical levels, decomposing a multivariate distribution. The tree structure is used to rank variables by conditional dependence and to identify a subset of central variables with local dependence, thus simplifying probabilistic mining of high-dimensional EHR data. The proposed application of vine copulas is used to identify conditional dependence between co-morbid conditions and is validated for characterizing different cohorts of EHR patients. The contribution of this paper is a novel approach to probabilistic mining and exploration of healthcare data that provides data-driven explanations, visualization, and variable selection to prognosticate a healthcare outcome. The source code is shared publicly.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_07706
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Vine Copulas for Analyzing Multivariate Conditional Dependencies in Electronic Health Records Data
Samad, Manar D.
Hou, Yina
Witherow, Megan A.
Diawara, Norou
Computation
Applications
Electronic health records (EHR) store hundreds of demographic and laboratory variables from large patient populations. Traditional statistical methods have limited capacity in processing mixed-type data (continuous, ordinal) and capturing non-linear relationships in large multivariate data when oversimplified assumptions are made about the distribution (e.g., Gaussian) of disparate variables in EHR data. This paper addresses the limitations mentioned above by repurposing the vine copula method, which is primarily used to synthesize a multivariate distribution from many bivariate cumulative distribution functions (copulas). Vine copulas produce tree structures that represent bivariate conditional dependencies at varying hierarchical levels, decomposing a multivariate distribution. The tree structure is used to rank variables by conditional dependence and to identify a subset of central variables with local dependence, thus simplifying probabilistic mining of high-dimensional EHR data. The proposed application of vine copulas is used to identify conditional dependence between co-morbid conditions and is validated for characterizing different cohorts of EHR patients. The contribution of this paper is a novel approach to probabilistic mining and exploration of healthcare data that provides data-driven explanations, visualization, and variable selection to prognosticate a healthcare outcome. The source code is shared publicly.
title Vine Copulas for Analyzing Multivariate Conditional Dependencies in Electronic Health Records Data
topic Computation
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07706