essential_agreement: Essential agreement for MIC validation

In MIC: Analysis of Antimicrobial Minimum Inhibitory Concentration Data

Essential agreement for MIC validation

Description

Essential agreement calculation for comparing two MIC vectors.

Usage

essential_agreement(
  x,
  y,
  coerce_mic = TRUE,
  tolerate_censoring = "strict",
  tolerate_matched_censoring = "both",
  mode = "categorical"
)

Arguments

x	AMR::mic or coercible
y	AMR::mic or coercible
coerce_mic	convert to AMR::mic
tolerate_censoring	"strict", "x", "y", or "both" - whether to tolerate censoring in x, y, or both. See details.
tolerate_matched_censoring	"strict", "x", "y", or "both" - how to handle situations where one of the values is censored, but both values match (e.g., x = ">2", y = "2"). For most situations, this is considered essential agreement. so should be left as "both".
mode	"categorical" or "numeric", see details

Details

Essential agreement is a central concept in the comparison of two sets of MIC values. It is most often used when validating a new method against a gold standard. This function reliably performs essential agreement in line with ISO 20776-2:2021. The function can be used in two modes: categorical and numeric. In categorical mode, the function will use traditional MIC concentrations to determine the MIC (therefore it will use force_mic() to convert both x and y to a clean MIC – see force_mic). In numeric mode, the function will compare the ratio of the two MICs, after removing censoring (values that are ">" and "<" are multiplied and divided by 2, respectively — see mic_uncensor). In most cases, categorical mode provides more reliable results. Values within +/- 1 dilutions are considered to be in essential agreement.

The tolerate_censoring argument controls how the function handles censored data. If set to "strict", the function will return NA for any pair of values that are both censored (and not equal). If set to "x" or "y", the function will allow one of the values to be censored and will compare the uncensored value to the other value. When set to "both", the function will allow one of the values to be censored. If using "both" and both values are censored, the function will attempt to determine essential agreement based on the ratio of the two values, but a warning will be raised.

Value

logical vector

References

International Organization for Standardization. ISO 20776-2:2021 Available from: https://www.iso.org/standard/79377.html

Examples

x <- AMR::as.mic(c("<0.25", "8", "64", ">64"))
y <- AMR::as.mic(c("<0.25", "2", "16", "64"))
essential_agreement(x, y)
# TRUE FALSE FALSE TRUE

# examples using tolerate_censoring
x <- AMR::as.mic("<4")
y <- AMR::as.mic("0.25")

essential_agreement(x, y, tolerate_censoring = "x") # TRUE
essential_agreement(x, y, tolerate_censoring = "y") # FALSE
essential_agreement(x, y, tolerate_censoring = "both") # TRUE (same as "x")

# strict returns FALSE as it wants the censoring cut-offs to be close
essential_agreement(x, y, tolerate_censoring = "strict")

MIC documentation built on June 10, 2025, 9:14 a.m.