Semi-parametric maximum likelihood estimates for ROC curves of continuous-scale tests.

In this paper, we propose a new semi-parametric maximum likelihood (ML) estimate of a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve that satisfies the property of invariance of the ROC curve and is easy to compute. We show that our new estimator is sqrt[n]-consistent and has an asymptotically normal distribution. Our extensive simulation studies show that the proposed method is efficient and robust. Finally, we illustrate the application of the proposed estimator in a real data set. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.