Non-Stationary Continuous Dynamic Bayesian Networks

Abstract

Dynamic Bayesian networks have been applied widely to reconstruct the structure of regulatory processes from time series data. The standard approach is based on the assumption of a homogeneous Markov chain, which is not valid in many real-world scenarios. Recent research efforts addressing this shortcoming have considered undirected graphs, directed graphs for discretized data, or over-flexible models that lack any information sharing between time series segments. In the present article, we propose a non-stationary dynamic Bayesian network for continuous data, in which parameters are allowed to vary between segments, and in which a common network structure provides essential information sharing across segments. Our model is based on a Bayesian change-point process, and we apply a variant of the allocation sampler of Nobile and Fearnside to infer the number and location of the change-points.