An Integrated Bayesian Nonparametric Approach for Stochastic and Variability Orders in ROC Curve Estimation: An...

In estimating ROC curves of multiple tests, some a priori constraints may exist, either between the healthy and diseased populations within a test or between tests within a population. In this paper, we proposed an integrated modeling approach for ROC curves that jointly accounts for stochastic and variability orders. The stochastic order constrains the distributional centers of the diseased and healthy populations within a test, while the variability order constrains the distributional spreads of the tests within each of the populations. Under a Bayesian nonparametric framework, we used features of the Dirichlet process mixture to incorporate these order constraints in a natural way. We applied the proposed approach to data from the Physician Reliability Study that investigated the accuracy of diagnosing endometriosis using different clinical information. To address the issue of no gold standard in the real data, we used a sensitivity analysis approach that exploited diagnosis from a panel of experts. To demonstrate the performance of the methodology, we conducted simulation studies with varying sample sizes, distributional assumptions and order constraints. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.