A class of estimators of the survival function from interval-censored data

Abstract

A model of interval censorship of a failure time T is considered when there is only one inspection time Y. The observable data are n independent copies of the pair $(Y, \delta)$, where $\delta = [T \leq Y]$. We construct a class of self-consistent estimators of the survival function of T defined implicitly through two equations and show their strong consistency under certain conditions. The properties of the onparametric maximum likelihood estimator are also investigated.