Estimating diagnostic accuracy of raters without a gold standard by exploiting a group of experts.

ABSTRACT: In diagnostic medicine, estimating the diagnostic accuracy of a group of raters or medical tests relative to the gold standard is often the primary goal. When a gold standard is absent, latent class models where the unknown gold standard test is treated as a latent variable are often used. However, these models have been criticized in the literature from both a conceptual and a robustness perspective. As an alternative, we propose an approach where we exploit an imperfect reference standard with unknown diagnostic accuracy and conduct sensitivity analysis by varying this accuracy over scientifically reasonable ranges. In this article, a latent class model with crossed random effects is proposed for estimating the diagnostic accuracy of regional obstetrics and gynaecological (OB/GYN) physic

SUBMITTER: Zhang B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3530625 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature