A Multivariate Copula-based Conformal Bayesian Framework for Doping Detection (Talk @ AUEB-SAW2024)

Abstract

Doping control is an essential component of anti-doping organizations for protecting clean sport competitions. Since 2009, this mission has been complemented worldwide by the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), used to monitor athletes’ individual profiles over time. The practical implementation of the ABP is based on a Bayesian framework, called ADAPTIVE (Sottas et al., 2008), intended to identify individual reference ranges outside of which an observation may indicate doping abuse. Currently, this method follows a univariate approach, relying on simultaneous analysis of different markers. This work extends the ADAPTIVE method to a multivariate testing framework, making use of copula models to couple the marginal distribution of biomarkers with their dependence structure. After introducing the proposed copula-based hierarchical model, we discuss our approach to inference, grounded in a Bayesian spirit, and present a conformal method for constructing predictive reference regions (Vovk et al., 2005). More in detail, we use, as a conformal measure, the posterior predictive density of the multidimensional biomarkers of individual athletes. Focusing on the haematological module of the ABP, we evaluate the proposed framework in both data-driven simulations and real data. This is a joint work with Brunero Liseo.

Date
May 23, 2024
Event
Talk @ AUEB SPORTS ANALYTICS 2024
Location
National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece