RefCurv is a software package providing methods to create pediatric reference curves. Furthermore, it comes with a big number of diagnostic tools. The graphical user interface (GUI) is written in Python. RefCurv uses R and the GAMLSS add-on package as the underlying statistical engine.
The 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 the form of percentile curves. The labels indicate the percentiles, e.g. “P3” stands for the third percentile.
How does RefCurv work?
RefCurv offers an easy-to-use interface that guides users through necessary steps for the construction of reference curves. Users do not need any programming experience.
RefCurv is free of charge and open source. You can find the code in the related GitHub repository.
As a user, you can load your data into RefCurv and analyze them in a scatter plot. You can select and deselect data points that should be considered for the reference curves. In some easy steps, you can fit a model to the data and plot the results as percentile curves.
Publications
RefCurv: A software for the construction of pediatric reference curves
Christian Winkler, Katharina Linden, Andreas Mayr, Thomas Schultz, Thomas Welchowski, Johannes Breuer und Ulrike Herberg
In: Software Impacts (Nov. 2020), 6 (100040)