Confidence Interval Estimation of the Difference Between Paired AUCs Based on Combined Biomarkers

Overview

Journal J Stat Plan Inference

Publisher Elsevier

Date 2009 Dec 1

PMID 19946609

Citations 2

Authors

Lili Tian

Albert Vexler

Li Yan

Enrique F Schisterman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

In many diagnostic studies, multiple diagnostic tests are performed on each subject or multiple disease markers are available. Commonly, the information should be combined to improve the diagnostic accuracy. We consider the problem of comparing the discriminatory abilities between two groups of biomarkers. Specifically, this article focuses on confidence interval estimation of the difference between paired AUCs based on optimally combined markers under the assumption of multivariate normality. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed generalized variable approach provides confidence intervals with satisfying coverage probabilities at finite sample sizes. The proposed method can also easily provide P-values for hypothesis testing. Application to analysis of a subset of data from a study on coronary heart disease illustrates the utility of the method in practice.

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