Evaluation of diagnostic methods.

Aim. Describe the statistical tools for the evaluation of a diagnostic test . Material and methods. Description of the methods and practical examples bas ed on published data. Results. The following methods are described: 1) reproducibility of a measu rement, both for a qualitative and a quantitative result, 2) comparison of a new diagnostic test to a reference test, 3) comparison of two diagnostic tests, 4) sample size computation. Conclusion, The tools required to evaluate diagnostic tests rigorously are available and simple. They should be used more often.