GSSMD: New metric for robust and interpretable assay quality assessment and hit selection

In the high-throughput screening (HTS) campaigns, the Z'-factor and strictly standardized mean difference (SSMD) are commonly used to assess the quality of assays and to select hits. However, these measures are vulnerable to outliers and their performances are highly sensitive to background distributions. Here, we propose an alternative measure for assay quality assessment and hit selection. The proposed method is a non-parametric generalized variant of SSMD (GSSMD). In this paper, we have shown that the proposed method provides more robust and intuitive way of assay quality assessment and hit selection.