title: Identifiability of the joint distribution of age and tumor size at detection in the presence of screening.
abstract: In recent years, a stochastic model of cancer development and detection allowing for arbitrary screening schedules has been developed and applied to analysis of screening trials and population-based cancer incidence and mortality data. The model is entirely mechanistic, builds on a minimal set of biologically plausible assumptions, and yields the joint distribution of tumor size and age of a patient at the time of diagnosis. Whether or not parameters of the model can be estimated from data generated by cohort studies depends on model identifiability. The present paper provides a proof of this important property of the model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209-8085, USA. hanin@isu.edu
authors.forename: Leonid
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hanin
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yakovlev
mesh_terms: D017677:Age Distribution; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology; D013269:Stochastic Processes