Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35389366›Full record

ArticleJMIR medical informatics2022

Utility Metrics for Evaluating Synthetic Health Data Generation Methods: Validation Study.

Khaled El Emam, Lucy Mosquera, Xi Fang, Alaa El-Hussuna

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in JMIR medical informatics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
25citing 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

25 citing papers in PubMed.

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  19. Entropy removal of medical diagnostics.Scientific reports · 2024
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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

4 authors.

Khaled El EmamSchool of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3325-4149
Lucy MosqueraChildren's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5289-8372
Xi FangReplica Analytics Ltd, Ottawa, ON, Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-7004
Alaa El-HussunaOpen Source Research Collaboration, Aarlberg, Denmark.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0070-8362

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundA regular task by developers and users of synthetic data generation (SDG) methods is to evaluate and compare the utility of these methods. Multiple utility metrics have been proposed and used to evaluate synthetic data. However, they have not been validated in general or for comparing SDG methods.

objectiveThis study evaluates the ability of common utility metrics to rank SDG methods according to performance on a specific analytic workload. The workload of interest is the use of synthetic data for logistic regression prediction models, which is a very frequent workload in health research.

methodsWe evaluated 6 utility metrics on 30 different health data sets and 3 different SDG methods (a Bayesian network, a Generative Adversarial Network, and sequential tree synthesis). These metrics were computed by averaging across 20 synthetic data sets from the same generative model. The metrics were then tested on their ability to rank the SDG methods based on prediction performance. Prediction performance was defined as the difference between each of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and area under the precision-recall curve values on synthetic data logistic regression prediction models versus real data models.

resultsThe utility metric best able to rank SDG methods was the multivariate Hellinger distance based on a Gaussian copula representation of real and synthetic joint distributions.

conclusionsThis study has validated a generative model utility metric, the multivariate Hellinger distance, which can be used to reliably rank competing SDG methods on the same data set. The Hellinger distance metric can be used to evaluate and compare alternate SDG methods.

Indexed as

binary prediction modeldata privacydata utilitygenerative modelslogistic regressionmedical informaticsmodel validationprediction modelsynthetic datasynthetic data generationutility metric

Identifiers

PMID35389366
PMCPMC9030990

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Registered trials

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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.