Estimation of the area under ROC curve with censored data

The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve is the most commonly used summary measure of diagnostic accuracy for a continuous-scale diagnostic test. In this paper, we develop methods to estimate the area under the curve (AUC) with censored data. Based on two different integration representations of this parameter, two nonparametric estimators are defined by the "plug in" method. Both the proposed estimators are shown to be asymptotically normal based on counting process and martingale theory. A simulation study is conducted to evaluate the performances of the proposed estimators. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.