Voronoi distance based prospective space-time scans for point data sets: a dengue fever cluster analysis in a southeast Brazilian town.

Background: The Prospective Space-Time scan statistic (PST) is widely used for the evaluation of space-time clusters of point event data. Usually a window of cylindrical shape is employed, with a circular or elliptical base in the space domain. Recently, the concept of Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) was applied to specify the set of potential clusters, through the Density-Equalizing Euclidean MST (DEEMST) method, for the detection of arbitrarily shaped clusters.