Sufficient dimension reduction via distance covariance for functional and longitudinal data

We propose a method of sufficient dimension reduction for functional data using distance covariance. We consider the case where the response variable is a scalar but the predictor is a random function. Our method has several advantages. It requires very mild conditions on the predictor, unlike the existing methods require the restrictive linear conditional mean assumption and constant covariance assumption. It also does not involve the inverse of the covariance operator which is not bounded. The link function between the response and the predictor can be arbitrary and our method maintains the model free advantage without estimating the link function. Moreover, our method is naturally applicable to sparse longitudinal data. We use functional principal component analysis with truncation as the regularization mechanism in the development. The justification for validity of the proposed method is provided and under some regularization conditions, statistical consistency of our estimator is established. Simulation studies and real data analysis are also provided to demonstrate the performance of our method.