ROCPLOT: a generic software tool for ROC analysis and the validation of predictive methods.

UNLABELLED: Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is a powerful and widely used technique for assessing predictive methods, yet there are no generic, open-source software tools for this that are freely available. Our ROCPLOT program performs ROC analysis on one or more files of search results (hits) and generates the following: (i) ROC values, giving a convenient numerical measure of method sensitivity and specificity; (ii) ROC plots graphically displaying sensitivity and specificity; (iii) classification plots to aid interpretation of the ROC plots and values; and (iv) a bar chart of the distribution of ROC values. ROCPLOT is generic and flexible: data in multiple hits files can be processed in series or parallel, allowing the results of multiple predictions to be viewed side-by-side or combined. AVAILABILITY: ROCPLOT is freely available for download as part of the European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite, EMBOSS (http://emboss.sourceforge.net/apps/rocplot.html).