Two-sample tests for repeated measurements of histogram objects with applications to wearable device data

TL;DR

This paper introduces new non-parametric graph-based two-sample tests designed for complex object data with repeated measures, such as histograms from wearable device data, demonstrating improved power and insights into biological variability.

Contribution

The paper develops novel non-parametric graph-based two-sample tests for repeated measures of complex object data, with derivation of asymptotic null distributions and demonstrated power improvements.

Findings

Tests outperform existing methods in simulations.

Methods control type I error in finite samples.

Application reveals variability in physical activity distributions.

Abstract

Repeated observations have become increasingly common in biomedical research and longitudinal studies. For instance, wearable sensor devices are deployed to continuously track physiological and biological signals from each individual over multiple days. It remains of great interest to appropriately evaluate how the daily distribution of biosignals might differ across disease groups and demographics. Hence these data could be formulated as multivariate complex object data such as probability densities, histograms, and observations on a tree. Traditional statistical methods would often fail to apply as they are sampled from an arbitrary non-Euclidean metric space. In this paper, we propose novel non-parametric graph-based two-sample tests for object data with repeated measures. A set of test statistics are proposed to capture various possible alternatives. We derive their asymptotic null distributions under the permutation null. These tests exhibit substantial power improvements over the existing methods while controlling the type I errors under finite samples as shown through simulation studies. The proposed tests are demonstrated to provide additional insights on the location, inter- and intra-individual variability of the daily physical activity distributions in a sample of studies for mood disorders.