A single-index model with a surface-link for optimizing individualized dose rules

This paper focuses on the problem of modeling and estimating interaction effects between covariates and a continuous treatment variable on an outcome, using a single-index regression. The primary motivation is to estimate an optimal individualized dose rule in an observational study. To model possibly nonlinear interaction effects between patients’ covariates and a continuous treatment variable, we employ a two-dimensional penalized spline regression on an index-treatment domain, where the index is defined as a linear projection of the covariates. The method is illustrated using two applications as well as simulation experiments. A unique contribution of this work is in the parsimonious (single-index) parametrization specifically defined for the interaction effect term.