An additive selection of markers to improve diagnostic accuracy based on a discriminatory measure

The estimation of the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) often relies on the assumption that the truly positive population tends to have higher marker results than the truly negative population. The authors propose a discriminatory measure to relax such an assumption and apply the measure to identify the appropriate set of markers for combination.

The proposed measure is based on the maximum of the AUC and 1-AUC. The existing methods are applied to estimate the measure. The subset of markers is selected using a combination method that maximizes a function of the proposed discriminatory score with the number of markers as a penalty in the function.

The properties of the estimators for the proposed measure were studied through large-scale simulation studies. The application was illustrated through a real example to identify the set of markers to combine.

Simulation results showed excellent small-sample performance of the estimators for the proposed measure. The application in the example yielded a reasonable subset of markers for combination.