Finite mixture of regression models for censored data based on the skew-t distribution

Finite mixture models have been widely used to model and analyze data from heterogeneous populations. In practical scenarios, these types of data often confront upper and/or lower detection limits due to the constraints imposed by experimental apparatuses. Additional complexity arises when measures of each mixture component significantly deviate from the normal distribution, manifesting characteristics such as multimodality, asymmetry, and heavy-tailed behavior, simultaneously. This paper introduces a flexible model tailored for censored data to address these intricacies, leveraging the finite mixture of skew-t distributions. An Expectation Conditional Maximization Either (ECME) algorithm, is developed to efficiently derive parameter estimates by iteratively maximizing the observed data log-likelihood function. The algorithm has closed-form expressions at the E-step that rely on formulas for the mean and variance of truncated skew-t distributions. Moreover, a method based on general information principles is presented for approximating the asymptotic covariance matrix of the estimators. Results obtained from the analysis of both simulated and real datasets demonstrate the proposed method’s effectiveness.