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. 2011 Oct 4;10:53. doi: 10.1186/1476-072X-10-53

Table 6.

Average sensitivity, PPV and cost of cluster detection methods

"Small Clusters"1 "Moderate Clusters"1 "Large Clusters"1

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9
Linear U-Shaped Compact Linear U-Shaped Compact Linear U-Shaped Compact
6 LZ 10 LZ 8 LZ 7 LZ 7 LZ 11 LZ 12 LZ 16 LZ 13 LZ
Average sensitivity
RR = 1.5 Scan-c 0.52 0.40 0.68
Scan-e0 0.52 0.38 0.61
FleX 0.43 0.35 0.49
GA-1 0.37 0.30 0.47
Double 0.42 0.31 0.39
Mlink 0.49 0.38 0.46

RR = 2.0 Scan-c 0.49 0.63 0.81 0.59 0.49 0.82
Scan-e0 0.64 0.46 0.75 0.71 0.45 0.78
FleX 0.57 0.68 0.64 0.50 0.43 0.64
GA-1 0.54 0.54 0.78 0.45 0.35 0.60
Double 0.48 0.48 0.63 0.50 0.37 0.51
Mlink 0.50 0.54 0.69 0.58 0.46 0.57

RR = 3.0 Scan-c 0.48 0.43 0.79 0.51 0.75 0.93 0.63 0.54 0.90
Scan-e0 0.82 0.18 0.82 0.85 0.50 0.92 0.89 0.49 0.88
FleX 0.68 0.70 0.82 0.69 0.86 0.78 0.61 0.51 0.75
GA-1 0.65 0.60 0.73 0.53 0.57 0.86 0.57 0.39 0.70
Double 0.43 0.39 0.81 0.52 0.57 0.79 0.60 0.44 0.59
Mlink 0.44 0.44 0.66 0.55 0.63 0.81 0.66 0.49 0.62

Average PPV
RR = 1.5 Scan-c 0.46 0.50 0.69
Scan-e0 0.40 0.39 0.53
FleX 0.45 0.49 0.57
GA-1 0.47 0.52 0.58
Double 0.54 0.54 0.62
Mlink 0.43 0.46 0.51

RR = 2.0 Scan-c 0.39 0.46 0.81 0.57 0.57 0.84
Scan-e0 0.47 0.33 0.65 0.61 0.52 0.73
FleX 0.45 0.49 0.67 0.57 0.61 0.74
GA-1 0.42 0.41 0.77 0.68 0.69 0.76
Double 0.56 0.55 0.77 0.70 0.67 0.80
Mlink 0.50 0.51 0.75 0.63 0.59 0.74

RR = 3.0 Scan-c 0.51 0.68 0.73 0.43 0.59 0.90 0.68 0.63 0.92
Scan-e0 0.73 0.25 0.73 0.73 0.44 0.90 0.73 0.53 0.89
FleX 0.57 0.76 0.77 0.65 0.70 0.83 0.75 0.79 0.88
GA-1 0.55 0.79 0.82 0.52 0.55 0.89 0.88 0.86 0.86
Double 0.72 0.73 0.88 0.70 0.73 0.92 0.85 0.81 0.89
Mlink 0.65 0.66 0.80 0.68 0.72 0.91 0.82 0.70 0.91

Average cost
RR = 1.5 Scan-c 14.00 16.70 8.60
Scan-e0 15.50 19.80 12.50
FleX 13.20 16.20 11.30
GA-1 13.30 16.10 11.40
Double 11.60 15.60 11.40
Mlink 14.40 17.40 13.60

RR = 2.0 Scan-c 10.30 8.40 4.80 11.10 14.60 4.80
Scan-e0 9.20 11.70 8.10 9.30 16.00 6.90
FleX 8.30 7.40 7.60 10.70 13.60 7.70
GA-1 9.20 9.50 5.30 9.60 13.40 7.70
Double 7.00 6.90 6.60 9.10 13.40 8.40
Mlink 8.50 8.00 6.60 10.10 14.80 9.10

RR = 3.0 Scan-c 8.00 9.10 4.50 9.10 5.70 2.10 8.70 12.70 2.40
Scan-e0 3.60 13.80 4.60 3.70 8.50 2.30 5.50 15.40 3.10
FleX 5.50 5.50 3.80 5.20 3.80 4.30 7.20 10.10 4.70
GA-1 6.00 6.10 3.70 7.20 6.60 2.90 6.20 11.00 5.50
Double 5.10 8.10 2.80 5.20 4.60 3.30 6.40 11.00 6.40
Mlink 5.90 9.10 4.80 5.30 4.60 3.20 6.40 12.60 6.10

Scan-c: circular scan method, Scan-e0: standard elliptic scan method, FleX: unrestricted flexible scan method, GA-1: strongly penalized genetic algorithm, Double and Mlink: dynamic minimum spanning tree method with double and maximum link connections, respectively. Results based on 250 Monte Carlo replications. 1 "small", "moderate" and "large" clusters are clusters with about 20, 45 and 115 cases of childhood acute leukemia over the period 1990-2006, respectively.