Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35195818›Full record

ReviewMedical & biological engineering & computing2022

Fifty years of Shannon information theory in assessing the accuracy and agreement of diagnostic tests.

Alberto Casagrande, Francesco Fabris, Rossano Girometti

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Medical & biological engineering & computing, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
6citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

6 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Information Theory-Guided Detection of Biomarkers Using Programmable Aptamer Arrays.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025
    Article
  3. Entropy removal of clinical features.Scientific reports · 2025
    Article
  4. Entropy removal of medical diagnostics.Scientific reports · 2024
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Alberto CasagrandeDipartimento di Matematica e Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Trieste, Italy.
Francesco FabrisDipartimento di Matematica e Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Trieste, Trieste, Italy. ffabris@units.it.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1950-8838
Rossano GiromettiIstituto di Radiologia, Dipartimento di Area Medica, Università degli Studi di Udine, Ospedale S. Maria della Misericordia, Udine, Italy.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Since 1948, Shannon theoretic methods for modeling information have found a wide range of applications in several areas where information plays a key role, which goes well beyond the original scopes for which they have been conceived, namely data compression and error correction over a noisy channel. Among other uses, these methods have been applied in the broad field of medical diagnostics since the 1970s, to quantify diagnostic information, to evaluate diagnostic test performance, but also to be used as technical tools in image processing and registration. This review illustrates the main contributions in assessing the accuracy of diagnostic tests and the agreement between raters, focusing on diagnostic test performance measurements and paired agreement evaluation. This work also presents a recent unified, coherent, and hopefully, final information-theoretical approach to deal with the flows of information involved among the patient, the diagnostic test performed to appraise the state of disease, and the raters who are checking the test results. The approach is assessed by considering two case studies: the first one is related to evaluating extra-prostatic cancers; the second concerns the quality of rapid tests for COVID-19 detection.

Indexed as

COVID-19Diagnostic Tests, RoutineHumansDiagnostic informationDiagnostic test performanceInformational diagnostic channelsInter-rater agreementQuality measuresShannon information theory

Identifiers

PMID35195818
PMCPMC8863911

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.