Approximation and Simulation of the Distributions of Scan Statistics for Poisson Processes in Higher Dimensions

Given a Poisson process in two or three dimensions, we are interested in the scan statistic, i.e. the largest number of points contained in a translate of a fixed scanning set restricted to lie inside a rectangular area. The distribution of the scan statistic is accurately approximated for rectangular scanning sets, using a technique that is also extended to higher dimensions. The accuracy of the approximation is checked through simulation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.