Title
A Novel Approach to Estimating Hormonal Pulse-times and Structural Parameters
Speaker
Somesh Chattopadhyay, Department of Statistics, University of Virginia
Abstract
Hormones are secreted from the neuroendocrine and endocrine glands either in a continuous or a pulsatile manner, or in a combination of two. They influence and are influenced by the secretion of other hormones. A pulse time is the onset of a pulse, which should be reflected by a very rapid increase in the observed concentration level. The goal of the present research is to estimate the unobserved secretion rates from the hormone concentration in the blood samples. To estimate the secretion rates, one needs to incorporate the set of pulse times as a parameter in the model, it being more like a nuisance parameter. A desirable pulse-detection algorithm should produce an initial set of (estimated) pulse times, and a procedure by which to systematically add/remove pulse times, based upon the fit of a model to the data. We have developed an algorithm to simultaneously detect the underlying pulse times and the structural parameters for secretion and elimination; the methods involve extensions of Gibbs sampling and simulated annealing.
