DeepPAMM: Deep Piecewise Exponential Additive Mixed Models for Complex Hazard Structures in Survival Analysis

Abstract: Survival analysis (SA) is an active field of research that is concerned with time-to-event outcomes and is prevalent in many domains, particularly biomedical applications. Despite its importance, SA remains challenging due to small-scale data sets and complex outcome distributions, concealed by truncation and censoring processes. The piecewise exponential additive mixed model (PAMM) is a model class addressing many of these challenges, yet PAMMs are not applicable in high-dimensional feature settings or in the case of unstructured or multimodal data. We unify existing approaches by proposing DeepPAMM, a versatile deep learning framework that is well-founded from a statistical point of view, yet with enough flexibility for modeling complex hazard structures. We illustrate that DeepPAMM is competitive with other machine learning approaches with respect to predictive performance while maintaining interpretability through benchmark experiments and an extended case study.