Early stopping in clinical PET studies: How to reduce expense and exposure

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Clinical positron emission tomography (PET) research is costly and entails exposing participants to radioactivity. Researchers should therefore aim to include just the number of subjects needed to fulfill the purpose of the study. In this tutorial we show how to apply sequential Bayes Factor testing in order to stop the recruitment of subjects in a clinical PET study as soon as enough data have been collected to make a conclusion. By using simulations, we demonstrate that it is possible to stop a study early, while keeping the number of erroneous conclusions low. We then apply sequential Bayes Factor testing to a real PET data set and show that it is possible to obtain support in favor of an effect while simultaneously reducing the sample size with 30%. Using this procedure allows researchers to reduce expense and radioactivity exposure for a range of effect sizes relevant for PET research.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism
Volume41
Issue number11
Pages (from-to)2805-2819
ISSN0271-678X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.

    Research areas

  • Bayes factor, Early stopping, positron emission tomography, sequential testing, tutorial

ID: 272236593