pmrm_model_slowing_nonproportional: Fit the non-proportional slowing model.

In pmrm: Progression Models for Repeated Measures

Fit the non-proportional slowing model.

Description

Fit the non-proportional slowing model to a clinical dataset on a progressive disease.

Usage

pmrm_model_slowing_nonproportional(
  data,
  outcome,
  time,
  patient,
  visit,
  arm,
  covariates = ~0,
  visit_times = NULL,
  spline_knots = visit_times,
  spline_method = c("natural", "fmm"),
  reml = FALSE,
  hessian = c("divergence", "never", "always"),
  saddle = FALSE,
  control = list(eval.max = 4000L, iter.max = 4000L),
  initial_method = c("regression", "regression_control", "zero"),
  initial = NULL,
  silent = TRUE
)

Arguments

data	A data frame or tibble of clinical data.
outcome	Character string, name of the column in the data with the numeric outcome variable on the continuous scale. Could be a clinical measure of healthy or of disease severity. Baseline is part of the model, so the outcome should not already be a change from baseline. The vector of outcomes may have missing values, either with explicit NAs or with rows in the data missing for one or more visits.
time	Character string, name of the column in the data with the numeric time variable on the continuous scale. This time is the time since enrollment/randomization of each patient. A time value of 0 should indicate baseline.
patient	Character string, name of the column in the data with the patient ID. This vector could be a numeric, integer, factor, or character vector. pmrm automatically converts it into an unordered factor.
visit	Character string, name of the column in the data which indicates the study visit of each row. This column could be a numeric, integer, factor, or character vector. An ordered factor is highly recommended because pmrm with levels assumed to be in chronological order. The minimum visit must be baseline.
arm	Character string, name of the column in the data which indicates the study arm of each row. This column could be a numeric, integer, factor, or character vector. An ordered factor is highly recommended because pmrm automatically converts data[[arm]] into an ordered factor anyway. The minimum level is assumed to be the control arm.
covariates	Partial right-sided formula of concomitant terms in the model for covariate adjustment (e.g. by age, gender, biomarker status, etc.). Usually does not include main variables such as the values of outcome, time, patient, visit, or arm. (If you do include any of these variables, be sure to check the fitted model for identifiability problems.) The columns in the data referenced in the formula must not have any missing values. Set covariates to ~ 0 (default) to opt out of covariate adjustment. The intercept term is removed from the model matrix W whether or not the formula begins with '~ 0.
visit_times	Numeric vector, the continuous scheduled time of each study visit (since randomization). If NULL, each visit time is automatically set set to the median of the observed times at categorical visit in the data.
spline_knots	Numeric vector of spline knots on the continuous scale, including boundary knots.
spline_method	Character string, spline method to use for the base model. Must be "natural" or "fmm". See stats::splinefun() for details.
reml	TRUE to fit the model with restricted maximum likelihood (REML), which involves integrating out fixed effects. FALSE to use unrestricted maximum likelihood. If reml is TRUE, then hessian is automatically set to "never".
hessian	Character string controlling when to supply the Hessian matrix of the objective function to the optimizer stats::nlminb(). Supplying the Hessian usually slows down optimization but may improve convergence in some cases, particularly saddle points in the objective function. The hessian argument is automatically set to "never" whenever reml is TRUE. The hessian argument must be one of the following values: "divergence": first try the model without supplying the Hessian. Then if the model does not converge, retry while supplying the Hessian. "never": fit the model only once and do not supply the Hessian to stats::nlminb(). "always": fit the model once and supply the Hessian to stats::nlminb().
saddle	TRUE to check if the optimization hit a saddle point, and if it did, treat the model fit as if it diverged. FALSE to skip this check for the sake of speed.
control	A named list of control parameters passed directly to the control argument of stats::nlminb().
initial_method	Character string, name of the method for computing initial values. Ignored unless initial is NULL. Must have one of the following values: "regression": sets the spline vertical distances alpha to the fitted values at the knots of a simple linear regression of the responses versus continuous time. Sets all the other true model parameters to 0. "regression_control": like "regression" except we only use the data from the control group. Sets all the other true model parameters to 0. "zero": sets all true model parameters to 0, including alpha.
initial	If initial is a named list, then pmrm uses this list as the initial parameter values for the optimization. Otherwise, pmrm automatically computes the starting values using the method given in the initial_method argument (see below). If initial is a list, then it must have the following named finite numeric elements conforming to all the true parameters defined in vignette("models", package = "pmrm"): alpha: a vector with the same length as spline_knots. theta: a matrix with K - 1 rows and J - 1 columns, where K is the number of study arms and J is the number of study visits. gamma: a vector with V elements, where V is the number of columns in the covariate adjustment model matrix W. If you are unsure of V, simply fit a test model (e.g. fit <- pmrm_model_slowing_nonproportional(...)) and then check ncol(fit$constants$W). phi: a vector with the same length as visit_times (which may be different from the length of spline_knots). rho: a vector with J * (J - 1) / 2 elements, where J is the length of visit_times. You can generate an example of the format of this list by fitting a test model (e.g. fit <- pmrm_model_slowing_nonproportional(...)) and then extracting fit$initial or fit$final.
silent	As MakeADFun.

Details

See vignette("models", package = "pmrm") for details.

Value

A pmrm fit object of class c("pmrm_fit_slowing", "pmrm_fit"). For details, see the "pmrm fit objects" section of this help file.

pmrm fit objects

A "pmrm_fit" object is a classed list returned by modeling functions. It has the following named elements:

• data: a tibble, the input data with the missing outcomes removed and the remaining rows sorted by patient and visit within patient. The data has a special "pmrm_data" class and should not be modified by the user.

• constants: a list of fixed quantities from the data that the objective function uses in the optimization. Most of these quantities are defined in the modeling and simulation vignettes in the pmrm package. n_visits is a positive integer vector with the number of non-missing outcomes for each patient.

• options: a list of low-level model-fitting options for RTMB.

• objective: the objective function for the optimization. Returns the minus log likelihood of the model. The arguments are (1) a list of constants, and (2) a list of model parameters. Both arguments have strict formatting requirements. For (1), see the constants element of the fitted model object. For (2), see initial or final. model$fn (from the model element of the fitted model object) contains a copy of the objective function that only takes a parameter list. (The constants are in the closure of model$fn.)

• model: model object returned by RTMB::MakeADFun() with the compiled objective function and gradient. The elements can be supplied to an optimization routine in R such as stats::nlminb().

• optimization: the object returned by stats::nlminb() to perform the optimization that estimates the parameters. optimization$convergence equals 0 if an only if the model converges.

• report: object returned by RTMB::sdreport() which has information on the standard deviations of model parameters.

• initial: a list of model parameters initial values. Includes true parameters like theta and alpha but does not include derived parameters like beta or sigma. You can supply your own list of similarly formatted initial values to the initial argument of the modeling function you choose.

• final: a list of model parameter estimates after optimization, but not including derived parameters like beta or sigma. The format is exactly the same as initial (see above) to help deal with divergent model fits. If your model fit diverged and you want to try resume the optimization with slightly better values, you can modify values in final and supply the result to the initial argument of the modeling function.

• estimates: a full list of parameter estimates, including derived parameters

• standard_errors: a list of parameter standard errors.

• metrics: a list of high-level model metrics, including:

  • n_observations: positive integer scalar, number of non-missing observations in the data.

  • n_parameters: positive integer scalar, number of model parameters in the data. Includes true parameters like theta but excludes downstream functions of parameters such as beta.

  • log_likelihood: numeric scalar, the maximized log likelihood of the fitted model.

  • deviance: deviance of the fitted model, defined here as -2 * log_likelihood.

  • aic: numeric scalar, the Akaike information criterion of the fitted model.

  • bic: numeric scalar, the Bayesian information criterion of the fitted model.

• spline: a vectorized function that accepts continuous time x and returns the value of the fitted spline f(x | spline_knots, alpha) at time x given the user-specified knots spline_knots and the maximum likelihood estimates of alpha. Useful for diagnosing strange behavior in the fitted spline. If the spline behaves oddly, especially extrapolating beyond the range of the time points, please consider adjusting the knots spline_knots or the initial values of alpha when refitting the model.

See Also

Other models: pmrm_model_decline_nonproportional(), pmrm_model_decline_proportional(), pmrm_model_slowing_proportional()

Examples

  set.seed(0L)
  simulation <- pmrm_simulate_slowing_nonproportional(
    visit_times = seq_len(5L) - 1,
    gamma = c(1, 2)
  )
  fit <- pmrm_model_slowing_nonproportional(
    data = simulation,
    outcome = "y",
    time = "t",
    patient = "patient",
    visit = "visit",
    arm = "arm",
    covariates = ~ w_1 + w_2
  )
  str(fit$estimates)
  names(fit)

pmrm documentation built on March 12, 2026, 5:07 p.m.