arXiv:2605.22776cs.LGcs.AI2026-05

用扩散模型直接生成连续时间生存分布,无需离散化或假设风险函数形式。

SDPM: Survival Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Continuous-Time Survival Analysis

论文配图:SDPM: Survival Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Continuous-Time Survival Analysis
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用去噪扩散模型建模生存事件的联合分布,避免参数假设和时间离散化。
  • 在10个真实数据集上表现优于多种基线模型,尤其在事件率校准和预测判别力上更优。
  • 适合需要高精度生存预测的医学研究者,尤其关注非参数建模与连续时间处理。

生存分析旨在从带有删失观测的数据中估计事件发生时间分布。现有方法常对风险函数施加结构假设或对时间轴进行离散化,限制了灵活性并引入近似误差。本文提出生存扩散概率模型(SDPM),一种面向连续时间生存分析的生成式方法。SDPM 使用去噪扩散模型建模条件分布 $\\(mathbb{P}(T,δ\\(mid \mathbf{x})$,即观测时间与删失指示变量的联合分布。在条件独立删失假设下,通过Kaplan-Meier估计器可将模型生成的样本转化为生存函数估计。该方法不依赖事件时间分布的参数假设,也无需输出时间空间的离散化。模型在变换目标空间中运行,采用标准化对数时间与连续高斯混合表示删失指示变量。我们在10个真实生存数据集上评估了SDPM,对比五种强基线模型(包括树、提升与神经网络类生存模型)。结果表明,SDPM在C-index、整合时间依赖AUC与整合Brier分数上均表现优异。在合成Cox-Weibull数据上的研究显示,当生成足够多样本时,SDPM能更准确恢复底层连续生存分布形状,优于强非参数基线。消融实验验证了所提目标空间变换的重要性:显著提升事件率校准、减少无效生成时间,并持续改善预测判别力。代码已公开。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Survival analysis aims to estimate a time-to-event distribution from data with censored observations. Many existing methods either impose structural assumptions on the hazard function or discretize the time axis, which may limit flexibility and introduce approximation errors. We propose the Survival Diffusion Probabilistic Model (SDPM), a generative approach to continuous-time survival analysis. SDPM models the conditional distribution of the survival outcome, represented by the pair of observed time and censoring indicator, $\mathbb{P}(T,δ\mid \mathbf{x})$, using a denoising diffusion model. Under the assumption of conditionally independent censoring, conditional samples generated by the model can be transformed into survival function estimates using the Kaplan-Meier estimator. This formulation avoids parametric assumptions on the event-time distribution and does not require a discretization of the output time space. The model operates in a transformed target space, using standardized log-times and a continuous Gaussian-mixture representation of the censoring indicator. We evaluate SDPM on ten real survival datasets and compare it with five strong baselines, including tree-based, boosting-based, and neural survival models. Results show that SDPM achieves competitive predictive performance across C-index, integrated time-dependent AUC, and integrated Brier score. A study on synthetic Cox-Weibull data demonstrates that SDPM can recover the shape of an underlying continuous survival distribution more accurately than a strong nonparametric baseline when sufficiently many samples are generated. An ablation study confirms the importance of the proposed target-space transformations, which improve event-rate calibration, reduce invalid generated times, and provide consistent gains in predictive discrimination. Codes implementing the proposed model are publicly available.

生存分析扩散模型连续时间生成模型

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。