CLEAR item#45

“Flowchart for eligibility criteria. Provide a flowchart for summarizing eligibility criteria with the number of included and excluded instances. If more than one data source is involved, please give details for each source separately.” [1] (from the article by Kocak et al.; licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Reporting examples for CLEAR item#45

Example#1. See Figure 1.

Fig1

Figure 1. “The flow chart of the study design.” [2] (from the article by Feng et al.; licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Example#2. See Figure 2.

Fig2

Figure 2. “The flowchart of the patient recruitment process” [3] (from the article by Liu et al.; licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Explanation and elaboration of CLEAR item#45

A flowchart is a visual representation of the sequential steps for the final study sample. The flowchart should provide the inclusion criteria with the initial number of selected samples, indicating when and where they were identified, exclusion criteria with the number of excluded samples, and the final numbers of samples. Inclusion and exclusion criteria should match the ones reported in the main text. The number of samples in the training/validation/test sets should also be provided. In studies from more than one center, ideally, the flow diagram should be provided separately and in parallel for each source of data to clearly express the number of included/excluded samples from each center.

References

  1. Kocak B, Baessler B, Bakas S, et al (2023) CheckList for EvaluAtion of Radiomics research (CLEAR): a step-by-step reporting guideline for authors and reviewers endorsed by ESR and EuSoMII. Insights Imaging 14:75. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13244-023-01415-8
  2. Feng J, Zeng R, Geng Y, et al (2023) Automatic differentiation of ruptured and unruptured intracranial aneurysms on computed tomography angiography based on deep learning and radiomics. Insights Imaging 14:76. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13244-023-01423-8
  3. Liu H, Wei Z, Xv Y, et al (2023) Validity of a multiphase CT-based radiomics model in predicting the Leibovich risk groups for localized clear cell renal cell carcinoma: an exploratory study. Insights Imaging 14:167. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13244-023-01526-2

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