MVPBT: R package for publication bias tests in meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy studies

Meta-analysis for diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) has been one of standard research methods for evidence synthesis of diagnostic studies. In DTA meta-analysis, although publication bias is an important source of bias, there were no certain methods to detect such bias such as the Egger test in univariate meta-analysis. However, several recent studies have discussed these methods in the framework of multivariate meta-analysis, and some generalized Egger tests have been developed. A R package MVPBT (https://github.com/nomahi/MVPBT) is developed to implement the generalized Egger tests developed by Noma (2020; Biometrics 76, 1255-1259) for DTA meta-analysis. Noma's publication bias tests effectively incorporate the correlation information between multiple outcomes and are expected to improve the statistical powers. This paper provides a non-technical introduction for the publication bias tests of DTA meta-analysis using MVPBT.