Variational Bayes Inference of Survival Data using Log-logistic Accelerated Failure Time ModelThe log-logistic regression model is one of the most commonly used
accelerated failure time (AFT) models in survival analysis, for which
statistical inference methods are mainly established under the frequentist
framework. Recently, Bayesian inference for log-logistic AFT models using
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques has also been widely developed. In
this work, we develop an alternative approach to MCMC methods and infer the
parameters of the log-logistic AFT model via a mean-field variational Bayes
(VB) algorithm. A piece-wise approximation technique is embedded in deriving
the update equations in the VB algorithm to achieve conjugacy. The proposed VB
algorithm is evaluated and compared with typical frequentist inferences using
simulated data under various scenarios, and a publicly available dataset is
employed for illustration. We demonstrate that the proposed VB algorithm can
achieve good estimation accuracy and is not sensitive to sample sizes,
censoring rates, and prior information.
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