Kanjilal, Partha. P. and Bhattacharya, Joydeep. 1999. Revisited Measles and Chickenpox Dynamics through Orthogonal Transformation. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 197(2), pp. 163-174. ISSN 00225193 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

The question addressed is whether or not childhood epidemics such as measles and chickenpox are characterized by low-dimensional chaos. We propose a new method for the detection and extraction of hidden periodic components embedded in an irregular cyclical series, and study the characterization of the epidemiological series in terms of the characteristic features or periodicity attributes of the extracted components. It is shown that the measles series possesses two periodic components each having a period of one year. Both the periodic components have time-varying pattern, and the process is nonlinear and deterministic; there is no evidence of strong chaoticity in the measles dynamics. The chickenpox series has one seasonal component with stable pattern, and the process is deterministic but linear, and hence non-chaotic. We also propose surrogate generators based on null hypotheses relating to the variability of the periodicity attributes to analyse the dynamics in the epidemic series. The process dynamics is also studied using seasonally forced SEIR epidemic model, and the characterization performance of the proposed schemes is assessed.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.1998.0865
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Psychology
Dates:	Date Event 1999 Published
Item ID:	4990
Date Deposited:	22 Feb 2011 11:27
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2017 13:22
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/4990

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