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A regression approach to ROC surface, with applications to Alzheimer’s disease

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  • Methods for Diagnostic Tests and Biomarkers
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Abstract

We consider the estimation of three-dimensional ROC surfaces for continuous tests given covariates. Three way ROC analysis is important in our motivating example where patients with Alzheimer’s disease are usually classified into three categories and should receive different category-specific medical treatment. There has been no discussion on how covariates affect the three way ROC analysis. We propose a regression framework induced from the relationship between test results and covariates. We consider several practical cases and the corresponding inference procedures. Simulations are conducted to validate our methodology. The application on the motivating example illustrates clearly the age and sex effects on the accuracy for Mini-Mental State Examination of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, National University of Singapore, 6 Science Drive 2, Singapore, 117546, Singapore

    JiaLiang Li

  2. Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, 8 College Road, Singapore, 169857, Singapore

    JiaLiang Li

  3. Singapore Eye Research Institute, 11 Third Hospital Avenue, Singapore, 168751, Singapore

    JiaLiang Li

  4. Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    XiaoHua Zhou

  5. Department of Biostatistics and Department of Statistics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

    Jason P. Fine

Authors
  1. JiaLiang Li
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  2. XiaoHua Zhou
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  3. Jason P. Fine
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Correspondence to JiaLiang Li.

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Li, J., Zhou, X. & Fine, J.P. A regression approach to ROC surface, with applications to Alzheimer’s disease. Sci. China Math. 55, 1583–1595 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11425-012-4462-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11425-012-4462-3

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