Statistical aspects of birth--and--growth stochastic processes

The paper considers a particular family of set--valued stochastic processes modeling birth--and--growth processes. The proposed setting allows us to investigate the nucleation and the growth processes. A decomposition theorem is established to characterize the nucleation and the growth. As a consequence, different consistent set--valued estimators are studied for growth process. Moreover, the nucleation process is studied via the hitting function, and a consistent estimator of the nucleation hitting function is derived.