Estimating distribution of the age of onset of detectable asymptomatic cancer

In this paper we develop a model and a deconvolution technique to estimate the distribution of the age of onset of detectable preclinical cancer, using incidence data and information about cancer growth rate. Our approach considers the e ect of age on both the growth rate and competing causes of death. We illustrate our methodology using data on breast cancer, and discuss implications for breast cancer screening.