Figure 1.

Flowchart for the 30-patient, five-DEC design with futility analysis used in the simulation study. There are three choices of dose-assignment mechanism (the light box, green online) and two choices of efficacy analysis (the dark box, blue online). Every box represents a decision to continue enrolling patients or stop enrolling patients due to toxicity (the light boxes) or futility (the dark boxes), and so, after initial dose escalation is complete, recommendations can be made separately for each DEC.