Fig. 5: Plots illustrating the biased predictive performance of WSI-based biomarker predictors across patients with different histological grades through stratification analysis.
From: Confounding factors and biases abound when predicting molecular biomarkers from histological images
a, In the plots, AUROC values are illustrated on the y axis, with the top x axis indicating the prediction variables and the bottom x axis showing the patient stratification with respect to histological grade. The predictive performance of each predictor on all the cases in the cohort (denoted by ‘All’ in the plot) over 100 bootstrap runs is shown using a violin plot, whereas its performance in a group of patients with a certain histological grade is depicted with a doughnut chart, with the centre representing the AUROC values. The horizontal white line inside each violin marks the mean of the distribution. Doughnuts marked with an asterisk at the top indicate statistically significant differences in results (Benjamini–Hochberg FDR-corrected P values from two-sided permutation testing \(P\ll 0.05\)). Red and blue colours in each doughnut indicate the proportion of positive and negative cases in each stratified group in relation to prediction variables. b, Heat maps highlighting the shift in the association structure between histological grade and biomarker status across two distinct datasets. The colour intensity reflects the strength of association, with dark red indicating strong co-occurrence and dark blue indicating strong mutual exclusivity.
