Simplifying the estimation of diagnostic testing accuracy over time for high specificity tests in the absence of a gold standard

Abstract

Many different methods for evaluating diagnostic test results in the absence of a gold standard have been proposed. In this paper, we discuss how one common method, a maximum likelihood estimate for a latent class model found via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm can be applied to longitudinal data where test sensitivity changes over time. We also propose two simplified and nonparametric methods which use data-based indicator variables for disease status and compare their accuracy to the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) results. We find that with high specificity tests, the performance of simpler approximations may be just as high as the MLE.

Keywords: Ebola virus disease; diagnostic testing; latent class model; multiple testing; nongold-standard test; nonparametric model.