Comparison of statistical methods for the analysis of limiting dilution assays

This study reports the results of a critical comparison of five statistical methods for estimating the density of viable cells in a limiting dilution assay (LDA). Artificial data were generated using Monte Carlo simulation. The performance of each statistical method was examined with respect to the accuracy of its estimator and, most importantly, the accuracy of its associated estimated standard error (SE). The regression method was found to perform at a level that is unacceptable for scientific research, due primarily to gross underestimation of the SE. The maximum likelihood method exhibited the best overall performance. A corrected version of Taswell's weighted-mean method, which provides the best performance among all noniterative methods examined, is also presented.