xi2pi / RefCurv

RefCurv: A Software for the Construction of Pediatric Reference Curves

RefCurv

RefCurv is a software providing methods to create pediatric reference curves from data. Furthermore, it comes with a big number of features to analyze reference curves. The graphical user interface (GUI) is written in Python. RefCurv uses R and the GAMLSS add-on package as the underlying statistical engine.

Example

Following figure shows example reference curves for Body Mass Index (BMI) over age:

The curves are based on a dataset of healthy Dutch boys. RefCurv was used to fit a model to the data points and depict it in form of percentile curves. The labels indicate the percentiles, e.g. "P3" stands for the third percentile.

Overview

Publications

• Winkler, C., Linden, K., Mayr, A., Schultz, T., Welchowski, T., Breuer, J., & Herberg, U. (2020). RefCurv: A software for the construction of pediatric reference curves. Software Impacts, 6, 100040.

Acknowledgements

This study is funded by Fördergemeinschaft Deutsche Kinderherzzentren e.V.

References

• Cole, T.J. (1990). The LMS method for constructing normalized growth standards. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 44, 45-60.
• Rigby R.A. and Stasinopoulos D.M. (2005). Generalized additive models for location, scale and shape, Appl. Statist., 54, part 3, pp 507-554.
• gamlss package (CRAN)
• gamlss example dataset of Dutch boys
• Website of the GAMLSS developers
• GAMLSS on Wikipedia