A fast Monte Carlo expectation--maximization algorithm for estimation in latent class model analysis with an application to assess diagnostic accuracy for cervical neoplasia in women with atypical glandular cells

Le Kang, Randy Carter, Kathleen Darcy, James Kauderer and Shu-Yuan Liao

Journal of Applied Statistics, 2013, vol. 40, issue 12, 2699-2719

Abstract: In this article, we use a latent class model (LCM) with prevalence modeled as a function of covariates to assess diagnostic test accuracy in situations where the true disease status is not observed, but observations on three or more conditionally independent diagnostic tests are available. A fast Monte Carlo expectation--maximization (MCEM) algorithm with binary (disease) diagnostic data is implemented to estimate parameters of interest; namely, sensitivity, specificity, and prevalence of the disease as a function of covariates. To obtain standard errors for confidence interval construction of estimated parameters, the missing information principle is applied to adjust information matrix estimates. We compare the adjusted information matrix-based standard error estimates with the bootstrap standard error estimates both obtained using the fast MCEM algorithm through an extensive Monte Carlo study. Simulation demonstrates that the adjusted information matrix approach estimates the standard error similarly with the bootstrap methods under certain scenarios. The bootstrap percentile intervals have satisfactory coverage probabilities. We then apply the LCM analysis to a real data set of 122 subjects from a Gynecologic Oncology Group study of significant cervical lesion diagnosis in women with atypical glandular cells of undetermined significance to compare the diagnostic accuracy of a histology-based evaluation, a carbonic anhydrase-IX biomarker-based test and a human papillomavirus DNA test.

Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02664763.2013.825704 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:japsta:v:40:y:2013:i:12:p:2699-2719

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CJAS20

DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2013.825704

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Statistics is currently edited by Robert Aykroyd

More articles in Journal of Applied Statistics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().