[Evaluation of diagnostic efficacy in radiology. Literature review]

The recent development of new imaging procedures has lead the radiologists to assessing the diagnostic efficacy of the available examination techniques in order to reduce medical care costs. In cooperation with epidemiologists and statisticians, several methods of statistic analysis of the diagnostic efficacy of the procedures such as sensitivity and specificity evaluation, ROC analysis, disease prevalence, predictive value of tests, etc... have been developed. Benefit-cost and cost-efficiency analyses have also been performed, with a view to improving the quality of long-term medical care for the patient at a lower cost both for himself and the society.