Properties of the summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve for diagnostic test data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve has been recommended to represent the performance of a diagnostic test, based on data from a meta-analysis. However, little is known about the basic properties of the SROC curve or its estimate. In this paper, the position of the SROC curve is characterized in terms of the overall diagnostic odds ratio and the magnitude of inter-study heterogeneity in the odds ratio. The area under the curve (AUC) and an index Q(*) are discussed as potentially useful summaries of the curve. It is shown that AUC is maximized when the study odds ratios are homogeneous, and that it is quite robust to heterogeneity. An upper bound is derived for AUC based on an exact analytic expression for the homogeneous situation, and a lower bound based on the limit case Q(*), defined by the point where sensitivity equals specificity: Q(*) is invariant to heterogeneity. The standard error of AUC is derived for homogeneous studies, and shown to be a reasonable approximation with heterogeneous studies. The expressions for AUC and its standard error are easily computed in the homogeneous case, and avoid the need for numerical integration in the more general case. SE(AUC) and SE(Q(*)) are found to be numerically close, with SE(Q(*)) being larger if the odds ratio is very large. The methods are illustrated using data for the Pap smear screening test for cervical cancer, and for three tests for the diagnosis of metastases in cervical cancer patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.214 | 0.563 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".