INTERVAL CENSORED-DATA - A NOTE ON THE NONPARAMETRIC MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATOR OF THE DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION

Gentleman & Geyer (1994) discuss the analysis of interval censored dat a and present results based on standard convex optimisation theory. He re, this problem is viewed from the perspective of a mixing problem of indicator functions, Using an analogy with the problem of mixture dis tributions a variety of results are easily derived, including a charac terisation theorem for the maximum likelihood estimator and various re liably convergent algorithms. Software for the analysis of mixture dis tributions can be used to find the nonparametric estimate of the distr ibution function of the interval-censored survival time. Examples are provided to demonstrate the theory.