A0572
Title: Cost considerations for group testing studies with an imperfect assay and a gold standard
Authors: Shih-Hao Huang - National Central University (Taiwan) [presenting]
Mong-Na Lo Huang - National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan)
Kerby Shedden - Statistics (United States)
Abstract: The focus is on optimal group testing design problems when a cheap imperfect assay and an expensive perfect assay (gold standard) for a target trait are both available. The primary goal is to accurately estimate the prevalence of the trait in a given population, where the testing error rates of the imperfect assay are treated as nuisance parameters. Budget constraints are used to reflect the relative costs of performing the two assays and of collecting the individual samples. A mixed design strategy can be adopted, where individual samples are tested as a group sample by one of the three procedures: only the imperfect assay, only the perfect assay, and both assays. We characterize the optimal designs within the class with a tight upper bound on the number of distinct group sizes for each testing procedure. Based on this information, we provide an efficient algorithm to obtain an optimal budgeted design.
