Estimation of the bivariate distribution function for censored gap times

Abstract

In many medical studies, patients may experience several events during follow-up. The times between consecutive events (gap times) are often of interest and lead to problems that have received much attention recently. In this work we consider the estimation of the bivariate distribution function for censored gap times. Some related problems such as the estimation of the marginal distribution of the second gap time and the conditional distribution are also discussed. In this paper we introduce a nonparametric estimator of the bivariate distribution function based on Bayes' theorem and Kaplan-Meier survival function and explore the behavior of the four estimators through simulations. Real data illustration is included.