CIfinder is an R package intended to provide functions to compute confidence intervals for the positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) based on varied scenarios. In situations where the proportion of diseased subjects does not correspond to the disease prevalence (e.g. case-control studies), this package provides two types of solutions: I) five methods to estimate confidence intervals for PPV and NPV via ratio of two binomial proportions, including Gart & Nam (1988) https://doi.org/10.2307/2531848, Walter (1975) https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/62.2.371, MOVER-J (Laud, 2017) https://doi.org/10.1002/pst.1813, Fieller (1954) https://www.jstor.org/stable/2984043, and Bootstrap (Efron, 1979) https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429246593; II) three direct methods to compute the confidence intervals, including Pepe (2003) https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.2185, Zhou (2007) doi:10.1002/sim.2677, and Delta https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.2677. In prospective studies where the proportion of diseased subjects provides an unbiased estimate of the disease prevalence, the confidence intervals for PPV and NPV can be estimated by methods that are applicable to single proportions. In this case, the package provides six methods for cocmputing the confidence intervals: “clopper.pearson”, “wald”, “wilson”, “wilson.correct”, “agresti”, and “beta”.For more information, please see the Details and References sections in the user’s manual.
To demonstrate the utility of the CIfinder::ppv_npv_ci()
function for calculating the confidence intervals for PPV and NPV, we
will use a case-control study published by van de Vijver et al. (2002)
https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa021967. In the study,
Cases were defined as those that have metastasis within 5 years of
tumour excision, while controls were those that did not. Each tumor was
classified as having a good or poor gene signature which was defined as
having a signature correlation coefficient above or below the ‘optimized
sensitivity’ threshold, respectively. This ‘optimized sensitivity’
threshold is defined as the correlation value that would result in a
misclassification of at most 10 per cent of the cases. The performance
of their 70-gene signature as prognosticator for metastasis is
summarized in Table 1 below:
Case | Control | |
---|---|---|
Poor_Signature | 31 | 12 |
Good_Signature | 3 | 32 |
Total | 34 | 44 |
Since this was a case-control study, the proportion of cases (34/(34+44)=43.6%) is not an unbiased estimate of its prevalence (assumed 7%). PPV and NPV and their confidence intervals can’t be estimated directly. To calculate the confidence interval based “gart and nam” method:
library(CIfinder)
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 32, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "gart and nam")
#> $method
#> [1] "gart and nam"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.7272727
#>
#> $phi_ppv
#> phi_ppv_est phi_ppv_l phi_ppv_u phi_ppv_mle
#> 0.2991202 0.1715910 0.4656310 0.3009710
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u ppv_mle
#> 0.2010444 0.1391548 0.3049051 0.2000554
#>
#> $phi_npv
#> phi_npv_est phi_npv_l phi_npv_u phi_npv_mle
#> 0.1213235 0.0323270 0.3090900 0.1266740
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u npv_mle
#> 0.9909508 0.9772641 0.9975727 0.9905554
In this output, phi_ppv denotes $\phi_{PPV}=\frac{1-specificity}{sensitivity}$ in the function to estimate $PPV=\frac{\rho}{\rho+(1-\rho)\phi_{PPV}}$, where ρ is the prevalence. Similarly, phi_npv denotes $\phi_{NPV}=\frac{1-sensitivity}{specificity}$ in the function to estimate $NPV=\frac{1-\rho}{(1-\rho)+\rho\phi_{NPV}}$. ppv and npv provide the results for the estimates, lower confidence limit, upper confidence limit and the maximum likelihood estimate based on score method described in the Gart and Nam paper.
To calculate the confidence interval based “zhou’s method”
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 32, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "zhou")
#> $method
#> [1] "zhou"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.7272727
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.2010444 0.1217419 0.2803468
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9909508 0.9811265 1.0007750
#>
#> $ppv_logit_transformed
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.2010444 0.1331384 0.2919216
#>
#> $npv_logit_transformed
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9909508 0.9734141 0.9969560
In this output, since continuity correction isn’t specified, the
estimates and confidence intervals in ppv
and
npv
are same as the standard delta method where the
ppv_logit_transformed
and
npv_logit_transformed
refer the standard logit method
described in the paper. If continuity.correction
is being
specified:
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 32, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "zhou",
continuity.correction = TRUE)
#> $method
#> [1] "zhou"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.8699646
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.7090237
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.1836999 0.1148465 0.2525533
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9863836 0.9750497 0.9977175
#>
#> $ppv_logit_transformed
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.1836999 0.1244835 0.2626354
#>
#> $npv_logit_transformed
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9863836 0.9688986 0.9940985
In this case, a continuity correction value $\frac{z_{\alpha/2}^2}{2}$ is applied. The
ppv
and npv
outputs refer the “Adjusted” in
the paper and ppv_logit_transformed
and
npv_logit_transformed
denote the “Adjusted logit” method
described in the paper.
Also comparing to the Bootstrap methods:
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 32, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "boot")
#> $method
#> [1] "boot"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.7272727
#>
#> $phi_ppv
#> phi_ppv_est phi_ppv_l phi_ppv_u
#> 0.2991202 0.1648161 0.4889897
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.2010444 0.1333942 0.3135091
#>
#> $phi_npv
#> phi_npv_est phi_npv_l phi_npv_u
#> 0.12132353 0.03544511 0.36222277
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9909508 0.9734595 0.9973392
And Fieller method
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 32, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "fieller")
#> $method
#> [1] "fieller"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.7272727
#>
#> $phi_ppv
#> phi_ppv_est phi_ppv_l phi_ppv_u
#> 0.2991202 0.1538974 0.4509565
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.2010444 0.1430353 0.3284463
#>
#> $phi_npv
#> phi_npv_est phi_npv_l phi_npv_u
#> 0.1213235 0.0000000 0.2606399
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9909508 0.9807594 1.0000000
Case | Control | |
---|---|---|
Poor_Signature | 31 | 0 |
Good_Signature | 3 | 44 |
Total | 34 | 44 |
In this situation, Pepe
,
Delta
,Zhou
(standard logit), and
boot
methods can not be used without continuity correction.
Walter
method can be used, but there may have skewness
concerns. gart and nam
and mover-j
could be
considered.
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 44, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "gart and nam")
#> $method
#> [1] "gart and nam"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 1
#>
#> $phi_ppv
#> phi_ppv_est phi_ppv_l phi_ppv_u phi_ppv_mle
#> 0.000000 0.000000 0.067785 0.004121
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u ppv_mle
#> 1.0000000 0.5261573 1.0000000 0.9480916
#>
#> $phi_npv
#> phi_npv_est phi_npv_l phi_npv_u phi_npv_mle
#> 0.08823529 0.02376800 0.21956500 0.09223300
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u npv_mle
#> 0.9934025 0.9837423 0.9982142 0.9931056
Comparing to the Walter
output:
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 44, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "walter")
#> $method
#> [1] "walter"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.9117647
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 1
#>
#> $phi_ppv
#> phi lower upper
#> 0.0000000000 0.0007803411 0.1940673904
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 1.0000000 0.2794604 0.9897390
#>
#> $phi_npv
#> phi lower upper
#> 0.08823529 0.03758016 0.27386671
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9934025 0.9798027 0.9971794
Note, for walter
, no continuity.correction should be
used as 0.5 has been used as described by the original paper.
Also comparing to the Zhou’s adjusted methods:
ppv_npv_ci(x1 = 31, n1 = 34, x0 = 44, n0 = 44, prevalence = 0.07,
method = "zhou",
continuity.correction = TRUE)
#> $method
#> [1] "zhou"
#>
#> $sensitivity
#> [1] 0.8699646
#>
#> $specificity
#> [1] 0.9598522
#>
#> $ppv
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.6199169 0.2921698 0.9476640
#>
#> $npv
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9899059 0.9816510 0.9981609
#>
#> $ppv_logit_transformed
#> ppv_est ppv_l ppv_u
#> 0.6199169 0.2886800 0.8676335
#>
#> $npv_logit_transformed
#> npv_est npv_l npv_u
#> 0.9899059 0.9772354 0.9955563
We appreciate any feedback, comments and suggestions. If you have any questions or issues to use the package, please reach out to the developers.