A non-parametric method for fitting ROC curves for evaluation of industrial inspection performance

The use of signal detection theory (SDT) in evaluation of the performance of an inspector on certain tasks requires the identification of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the inspector. In this paper a functional form, Y = f(X), for the ROC equation is proposed, and two alternative approaches are developed for estimation of its parameters. This method does not require prior assumptions on the statistical distribution of the noise and signal‐plus‐noise. The application of the method is illustrated by the use of an example data set.