Mosaic Masonries to Interpret Diagnostic Test Results

Abstract

Currently, assessing superiority of a diagnostic test requires cumbersome calculations and confusing interpretations because of nonlinear Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC). To remedy these difficulties, this article prepares, provides an easier alternate geometric approach. That is, a simple but more effective visual approach with two complementary mosaic masonries are constructed with their properties, superimposed and utilized. First masonry is conditional on disease status. The second masonry is conditional on test outcomes. By superimposing both masonries and visualizing their overlap territory, our approach utilizes an angle, θ to assess superiority of a diagnostic test. A hypothesis testing procedure is also devised to compute the significance level of an estimated angle. The statistical power to accept a true angle is developed in the procedure. In the end, the concepts, properties and advantages of mosaic masonries are illustrated using medical and public health data sets.