Ovarian cancer has a high cure rate if detected in early stage, and a low cure rate if detected in late stage, which is commonly the case. Hence an early detection program is an appealing approach to reducing mortality from this disease. However, the low incidence of the disease presents a difficult hurdle for early detection programs, requiring a very high specificity and simultaneous high sensitivity to be effective. We demonstrate how the extra information in the longitudinal value of a marker can substantially improve the specificity and sensitivity simultaneously, and indicate methods whereby the longitudinal approach could be used in practice.

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