Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nonparametric And Semiparametric Group Sequential Methods For Comparing Accuracy Of Diagnostic Tests, Liansheng Tang, Scott S. Emerson, Xiao-Hua Zhou

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Comparison of the accuracy of two diagnostic tests using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves from two diagnostic tests has been typically conducted using fixed sample designs. On the other hand, the human experimentation inherent in a comparison of diagnostic modalities argues for periodic monitoring of the accruing data to address many issues related to the ethics and efficiency of the medical study. To date, very little research has been done in the use of sequential sampling plans for comparative ROC studies, even when these studies may use expensive and unsafe diagnostic procedures. In this paper, we propose a nonparametric …