Load a Prebuilt Biomarker Reference Distribution

Some prebuilt reference sets ship a baseline biomarker reference distribution used by normalize_wss_biomarkers() (method = "project") to rank-normalize new raw biomarker values without needing a sizeable cohort of your own. Each biomarker's reference values are drawn from the real baseline cohort, but independently randomly shuffled so that no two values across different biomarkers can be attributed to the same original subject. This preserves each biomarker's marginal distribution exactly (every value, tie, and extreme is real) while destroying the joint/multivariate fingerprint that carries re-identification risk.

Usage

load_prebuilt_biomarker_reference(prebuilt = "core_AD_plasma_biomarkers")

Arguments

prebuilt

Name of a prebuilt reference set. See list_prebuilt_wss() for available options.

Value

A data.table with columns biomarker and value (long format, one row per reference observation), or NULL if the given reference set has no associated biomarker reference.

Details

Because of this, the returned reference has no valid joint structure — inter-biomarker correlations are deliberately destroyed. Only use it for independent per-biomarker operations (rank/quantile lookups), never for anything requiring multivariate relationships (e.g. correlation or joint modeling).

See also

normalize_wss_biomarkers(), project_rank_norm()

Examples

ref <- load_prebuilt_biomarker_reference()
table(ref$biomarker)
#> 
#>            PlasmaAB140P            PlasmaAB142P           PlasmaABRatio 
#>                     389                     389                     389 
#>              PlasmaGFAP               PlasmaNfL           PlasmaPTau181 
#>                     389                     389                     389 
#>           PlasmapTau217 PlasmapTau217_AB42Ratio 
#>                     389                     389