The objective function controversy for group testing: Much ado about nothing?

Area of Science:

• Laboratory Medicine
• Infectious Disease Diagnostics
• Biostatistics

Background:

• Group testing is crucial for high-volume infectious disease testing.
• Selecting optimal group sizes (optimal testing configurations or OTCs) is a key implementation decision.
• Disagreement exists regarding the best objective function for determining OTCs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate and compare different objective functions for determining optimal testing configurations in infectious disease group testing.
• To investigate whether the choice of objective function significantly impacts testing outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Examined two common objective functions used in group testing.
• Analyzed these functions across various realistic scenarios for infectious disease testing.
• Compared the resulting optimal testing configurations and their associated metrics (e.g., number of tests, accuracy).

Main Results:

• The choice of objective function had minimal impact on the resulting optimal testing configurations.
• Different objective functions led to largely similar numbers of tests and accuracy levels.
• The controversy regarding the best objective function appears to be unsubstantiated for standard algorithms.

Conclusions:

• The selection of objective functions for determining optimal testing configurations in group testing is less critical than previously debated.
• Standard testing algorithms produce consistent results across different objective functions for infectious disease diagnostics.
• This finding simplifies decision-making for laboratories implementing group testing strategies.