A New Graphical Method for Reporting Performance Results of a Diagnostic Test

Reporting diagnostic performance results using standard performance measures, such as: sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values, have been a standard practice for decades. Issues with reporting using only numerical values include: 1) often only a subset of performance measures are reported, thus results could be misinterpreted and misused, 2) difficult to visualize the complex relationships of the reported performance measures. To overcome these shortcomings, a graphical presentation has been developed to further improve the test results reporting.The 2-dimentional performance graph uses line segment, area, ratio of line segments, ratio of areas, and sum of areas to represent most of the commonly used performance measures in this single graph.Advantages of the new graphic presentation are: 1) large number of performance measures can be presented and visualized simultaneously in a single graph, 2) allow the complex relationships of all performance measures to be understood more easily, 3) reduce the need to memorize some of the complex formulas for computing the performance measures, and 4) a great teaching tool in explaining the relationships of the commonly used performance measures.