On the statistical analysis of ROC curves

We introduce a new accuracy index for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, namely the partial area under the binormal ROC graph over any specified region of interest. We propose a simple but general procedure, based on a conventional analysis of variance, for comparing accuracy indices derived from two or more different modalities. The proposed method is related to and compared with existing methodology, and is illustrated by results from an experiment on optimization of density and contrast yielded by multiform photographic images used for scintigraphy.