Cardiovasc Prev Pharmacother.  2021 Jan;3(1):15-20. 10.36011/cpp.2021.3.e2.

Methods for Evaluating the Accuracy of Diagnostic Tests

• Lim CY

• KMID: 2536948
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.36011/cpp.2021.3.e2

Abstract

The accuracy of a diagnostic test should be evaluated before it is used in clinical situations. The sensitivity, specificity, and the trade-off between the 2 need to be considered. Sensitivity and specificity in diagnostic tests depend on the selection of cut-off values, and appropriate cut-off values can be arrived at by analyzing the receiver operating characteristic curve. In actual clinical setting, it is often difficult to obtain an appropriate gold standard for diagnosis, and in this case, consent is required as well. In this article, we summarize the basic concepts and methods for evaluating the performance of diagnostic tests.

Keyword

Biostatistics; Causality; Epidemiologic studies; Sensitivity and specificity; Statistics

Figure

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  Figure 1. The trade-off between sensitivity and specificity.FN = false negative; FP = false positive; TN = true negative; TP = true positive.

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