Sieve Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Partially Linear Transformation Models With Interval-Censored Data

Partially linear models provide a valuable tool for modeling failure time data with nonlinear covariate effects. Their applicability and importance in survival analysis have been widely acknowledged. To date, numerous inference methods for such models have been developed under traditional right censoring. However, the existing studies seldom target interval-censored data, which provide more coarse information and frequently occur in many scientific studies involving periodical follow-up. In this work, we propose a flexible class of partially linear transformation models to examine parametric and nonparametric covariate effects for interval-censored outcomes. We consider the sieve maximum likelihood estimation approach that approximates the cumulative baseline hazard function and nonparametric covariate effect with the monotone splines and B$$ B $$-splines, respectively. We develop an easy-to-implement expectation-maximization algorithm coupled with three-stage data augmentation to facilitate maximization. We establish the consistency of the proposed estimators and the asymptotic distribution of parametric components based on the empirical process techniques. Numerical results from extensive simulation studies indicate that our proposed method performs satisfactorily in finite samples. An application to a study on hypobaric decompression sickness suggests that the variable TR360 exhibits a significant dynamic and nonlinear effect on the risk of developing hypobaric decompression sickness.