Abstract
The area under a receiver operating characteristic curve is a useful index of the accuracy of a diagnostic test. When the diagnostic ability of a new biomarker is of interest only in a certain range of specificity, the partial area under the curve becomes desirable. In this article, we extend Bomber's (1975) results and show that the partial area under a receiver operating characteristic curve is the probability of a constrained stochastic ordering. We then construct a 'weighted' Mann-Whitney statistic as an estimator of the partial area and investigate its statistical properties. A testing procedure is also developed to compare partial area under two receiver operating characteristic curves. The methods are exemplified with data from biomarkers associated with coronary heart disease.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 2077-2088 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 9-10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2005 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Accuracy of diagnostic tests
- Biomarkers
- Mann-Whitney statistics
- Sensitivity
- Specificity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistics and Probability