Developing a Sensitive Search Strategy in MEDLINE to Retrieve Studies on Assessment of the Diagnostic Performance of Imaging Techniques

PURPOSE: To prospectively develop a search strategy in MEDLINE for identifying studies on the diagnostic performance of any imaging modality, with maximized and minimized retrieval of relevant and irrelevant studies, respectively. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Predefined inclusion criteria were used to conduct a hand search of two sets of radiologic journal articles for studies on assessment of the diagnostic performance of imaging techniques. These two sets of articles formed independent derivation and validation record sets for developing and evaluating the search strategy. The sensitivity and positive predictive values (PPVs) of search terms from the derivation reference-standard set of records were used to select terms and develop two components of the search strategy. The first component was used to identify any study…