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Youden Index and the optimal threshold for markers with mass at zero
Author(s) -
Schisterman Enrique F.,
Faraggi David,
Reiser Benjamin,
Hu Jessica
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.2993
Subject(s) - youden's j statistic , cutoff , receiver operating characteristic , covariate , statistics , index (typography) , measure (data warehouse) , mathematics , computer science , zero (linguistics) , data mining , physics , quantum mechanics , world wide web , linguistics , philosophy
The Youden Index is often used as a summary measure of the receiver operating characteristic curve. It measures the effectiveness of a diagnostic marker and permits the selection of an optimal threshold value or cutoff point for the biomarker of interest. Some markers, while basically continuous and positive, have a spike or positive mass of probability at the value zero. We provide a flexible modeling approach for estimating the Youden Index and its associated cutoff point for such spiked data and compare it with the standard empirical approach. We show how this modeling approach can be adjusted to take covariate information into account. This approach is applied to data on the Coronary Calcium Score, a marker foratherosclerosis. Published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.