PURPOSE To evaluate effects of combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data acquired from different field strengths on group analysis as a function of the number of subjects at each field strength. MATERIALS AND METHODS In all, 28 subjects (18 at 3T) participated in an auditory task of passively listening to a 0.75s segment of jazz music in an event-related design. Results of s...

The Lorenz curve for assessing economic inequality depicts the relation between two cumulative distribution functions (CDFs), one for the distribution of incomes or wealth and the other for their first-moment distribution. By contrast, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for evaluating diagnostic systems depicts the relation between the complements of two CDFs, one for the distrib...

OBJECTIVES To examine SLEDAI-2000 cut-off scores for definition of active SLE and to determine the sensitivity to change of SLEDAI-2000 for the assessment of SLE disease activity and minimal clinically meaningful changes in score. METHODS Data from two multi-centre studies were used in the analysis: in a cross-sectional and a longitudinal fashion. At every assessment, data were collected on S...

This paper clarifies two important concepts in clinical epidemiology: the slope of a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the likelihood ratio. It points out that there are three types of slopes in an ROC curve--the tangent at a point on the curve, the slope between the origin and a point on the curve, and the slope between two points on the curve. It also points out that there are...

Background Transient depressive state (TDS) is a transient, negative emotional state caused by certain events or situations. Because of the similarity in depressive symptoms between depression and TDS that arise within 2 weeks of their onset, it is difficult to distinguish TDS from depression. The aims of the present study were to investigate the application value of selected serum indicators i...

Previous studies have indicated a possible relationship between increased prostate volume (PV) and decreased biopsy yield, although the mechanism involved is unclear. We evaluated 1650 patients who underwent template biopsy. The distribution of 993 cancer lesions in 302 prostatectomy specimens was compared with the biopsy data to determine whether each lesion was detected. A receiver operating ...

The cross-sectional hospital based study was undertaken to provide an efficient and useful cut off point of maternal early third trimester weight, for low birth weight (LBW), based on receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve among Bengalee mothers of Kolkata, India. A total of 233 mother-baby pairs were included in the present analysis. The means for maternal age and weight were 23.44 (SD...

Many bioinformatics algorithms can be understood as binary classifiers. They are usually trained by maximizing the area under the receiver operating characteristic ( ROC) curve. On the other hand, choosing the best threshold for practical use is a complex task, due to uncertain and context-dependent skews in the abundance of positives in nature and in the yields/costs for correct/incorrect clas...

The ROC (Receiver Operating Chracteristic) curves are frequently used for different diagnostic purposes. There are several different approaches how to find the suitable estimate of the ROC curve in binormal model. The effective methods which can be used when the sample sizes are small are still very demanded in different applications. In the paper the binormal model is assumed and the parametri...

BACKGROUND A 36-item version of the Response Inventory for Stressful Life Events (RISLE) was derived from the longer 100 item version. The 36-item version may be more appropriate for use in larger population sample. OBJECTIVE To compare the responses of the 36-item RISLE to interview derived psychiatric diagnoses and suicidal ideation in a sub-sample of the general population and student samp...