A semiparametric approach for the estimation of covariate-adjusted area under the receiver operating characteristic curve

Abstract

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) are widely used to evaluate the discriminative ability of biomarkers. In many clinical settings, however, diagnostic accuracy varies substantially across patient characteristics, and failure to account for such heterogeneity can lead to misleading conclusions. We propose a new semiparametric framework based on generalized additive models to estimate covariate-specific and covariate-adjusted AUC while allowing for nonlinear and interaction effects of covariates on biomarker performance. Our method accommodates both binary and multicategory disease status. We also establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators. Simulations demonstrate favorable finite-sample performance. We illustrate the method using data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, where substantial heterogeneity in biomarker discrimination across covariates is observed.