Is My Clinical Prediction Model Clinically Useful? A Primer on Decision Curve Analysis.

Decision curve analysis is an increasingly popular method to assess the impact of a prediction model on medical decision making. The analysis provides a graphical summary. A basic understanding of a decision curve is needed to interpret these graphics. This short introduction addresses the common features of a decision curve. Furthermore, using a glioblastoma patient set provided by the Machine Intelligence in Clinical Neuroscience Lab from the Department of Neurosurgery and Clinical Neuroscience Center, University Hospital Zurich a decision curve is plotted for two prediction models. The corresponding R code is provided.