Binary sensor systems in Homeland Security, military, QC, and medical applications

摘要

Binary sensor systems are various types of analog sensors (optical, MEMS, X-ray, gamma-ray, acoustic, electronic, etc.), based on the binary decision process. Typical examples of such "binary sensors" are X-ray luggage inspection systems, product quality control systems, automatic target recognition systems, numerous medical diagnostic systems, and many others. In all these systems, the binary decision process provides only two mutually exclusive responses: "signal" and "noise." There are also two types of key parameters that characterize either system (such as false positive and false negative), or a priori external-to-system conditions (such as absolute probabilities). In this paper, by using a strong medical analogy, we analyze a third type of key parameter that combines both system-like and a priori information, in the form of so called Bayesian Figures of Merit, and we show that the latter parameter, in the best way, characterizes a binary sensor system.