Abstract
An overview of the use of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis within medicine is provided. A survey of the theory behind the analysis is offered together with a presentation on how to create a ROC curve and how to use Cost - Benefit analysis to determine the optimal cutoff point or threshold.
The use of ROC analysis is exemplified in the "Cost - Benefit analysis" section of the paper. In these examples, it can be seen that the determination of the optimal cutoff point is mainly influenced by the prevalence and the severity of the disease, by the risks and adverse events of treatment or the diagnostic testing, by the overall costs of treating true and false positives (TP and FP), and by the risk of deficient or non-treatment of false negative (FN) cases.