Determination of Varying Group Sizes for Pooling Procedure

Abstract

Pooling is an attractive strategy in screening infected specimens, especially for rare diseases. An essential step of performing the pooled test is to determine the group size. Sometimes, equal group size is not appropriate due to population heterogeneity. In this case, varying group sizes are preferred and could be determined while individual information is available. In this study, we propose a sequential procedure to determine varying group sizes through fully utilizing available information. This procedure is data driven. Simulations show that it has good performance in estimating parameters.