Receiver operating characteristic analysis for evaluating a proper experimental condition of eddy current tests under a low signal-to-noise ratio

This study proposed a method to evaluate proper experimental conditions of eddy current tests under a low signal-to-noise ratio. This method was applied to quantify the detection reliability of the eddy current test to detect corrosion pits on the surface of austenitic stainless-steel weld cladding from the perspectives of probability of detection and probability of false alarm. The fluctuations of flaw signal and noise were described using truncated bivariate normal distributions of a two-dimensional vector composed of the real and imaginary components of a signal. The probabilities of detection and false alarms were formalized as cumulative distributions of the estimated distributions of the maximum flaw signal and the noise exceeding a decision threshold. The receiver operating characteristic curves were created by coupling the probabilities of detection and false alarms at various thresholds. The area under the curve was used to quantify the detection reliability, simultaneously considering the probabilities of detection and false alarms. The results obtained in this study support the applicability of this method in quantitatively evaluating the detection reliability of a non-destructive inspection under a low signal-to-noise ratio.