title: Quantifying the change of melanoma incidence by Breslow thickness.
abstract: Melanoma incidence has increased throughout the world over the past 25 years. A surrogate for the severity of melanoma is the Breslow thickness of the lesions. Data on melanoma, including Breslow thickness, were collected in 1978-1980 and 1988-1990 from the Tasmania Tumor Registry. We use a density ratio model to quantify the change of melanoma by Breslow thickness. In this model, the ratio of two densities is assumed to have a known form up to a parameter, but the underlying densities are not modeled. This model includes the length bias sampling model as a special case. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statistic is used to test the correctness of the density ratio model. Model-based cumulative distribution estimation is studied. Methodology developed in this article is applied to the Tasmania Tumor Registry data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York 10021, USA. qinj@biosta.mskcc.org
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Marianne
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berwick
authors.forename: Rosie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ashbolt
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dwyer
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008545:Melanoma / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D012042:Registries; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000473:pathology*; D013648:Tasmania / Q000453:epidemiology