The log‐Gaussian Cox process is a flexible and popular stochastic process for modeling point patterns exhibiting spatial and space‐time dependence. Model fitting requires approximation of stochastic integrals which is implemented through discretization over the domain of interest. With fine scale discretization, inference based on Markov chain Monte Carlo is computationally burdensome because of the cost of matrix decompositions and storage, such as the Cholesky, for high dimensional covariance matrices associated with latent Gaussian variables. This article addresses these computational bottlenecks by combining two recent developments: (i) a data augmentation strategy that has been proposed for space‐time Gaussian Cox processes that is based on exact Bayesian inference and does not require fine grid approximations for infinite dimensional integrals, and (ii) a recently developed family of sparsity‐inducing Gaussian processes, called nearest‐neighbor Gaussian processes, to avoid expensive matrix computations. Our inference is delivered within the fully model‐based Bayesian paradigm and does not sacrifice the richness of traditional log‐Gaussian Cox processes. We apply our method to crime event data in San Francisco and investigate the recovery of the intensity surface.
Geostatistical modeling for continuous point‐referenced data has extensively been applied to neuroimaging because it produces efficient and valid statistical inference. However, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a neuroimaging technique characterizing the brain's anatomical structure, produces a positive‐definite (p.d.) matrix for each voxel. Currently, only a few geostatistical models for p.d. matrices have been proposed because introducing spatial dependence among p.d. matrices properly is challenging. In this paper, we use the spatial Wishart process, a spatial stochastic process (random field), where each p.d. matrix‐variate random variable marginally follows a Wishart distribution, and spatial dependence between random matrices is induced by latent Gaussian processes. This process is valid on an uncountable collection of spatial locations and is almost‐surely continuous, leading to a reasonable way of modeling spatial dependence. Motivated by a DTI data set of cocaine users, we propose a spatial matrix‐variate regression model based on the spatial Wishart process. A problematic issue is that the spatial Wishart process has no closed‐form density function. Hence, we propose an approximation method to obtain a feasible Cholesky decomposition model, which we show to be asymptotically equivalent to the spatial Wishart process model. A local likelihood approximation method is also applied to achieve fast computation. The simulation studies and real data application demonstrate that the Cholesky decomposition process model produces reliable inference and improved performance, compared to other methods.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1916208
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10485006
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Biometrics
- Volume:
- 78
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0006-341X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 548 to 559
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/biom.13445
