Fast Calculation of Calendar Time-, Age- and Duration Dependent Time at Risk in the Lexis Space

TL;DR

This paper introduces a rapid computational method for determining time at risk in epidemiological studies using Lexis diagrams, enhancing efficiency in stratifying data by period, age, and duration.

Contribution

It presents a novel application of Siddon's algorithm to efficiently calculate time at risk in two- and three-dimensional Lexis diagrams for epidemiological analysis.

Findings

Significantly reduces computation time for risk calculations.

Enables more precise stratification by multiple time dimensions.

Applicable to large epidemiological datasets.

Abstract

In epidemiology, the person-years method is broadly used to estimate the incidence rates of health related events. This needs determination of time at risk stratified by period, age and sometimes by duration of disease or exposition. The article describes a fast method for calculating the time at risk in two- or three-dimensional Lexis diagrams based on Siddon's algorithm.