RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC STUDY OF IMAGE PREPROCESSING FOR TELERADIOLOGY AND DIGITAL WORKSTATIONS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether digitized analog ima ges displayed on a digital workstation can be improved by using a prep rocessing algorithm, and if so, whether the quality of the resulting i mages can reach that of the original films, The material contained 120 difficult cases (about 50% with selected pathology), Four radiologist s each evaluated half of the randomly ordered cases with the digital w orkstation and half of the cases with the original radiographs. The da ta were compared with a previous similar study, where the workstation had no option for preprocessed images. Preprocessed digital images wer e clearly superior to digital images without preprocessing, although f or those of the highest diagnostic difficulty they were inferior to th e original films, The preprocessing algorithm has improved the diagnos tic quality of the digital workstation. There is room yet for improvem ent compared to plain films, although the current setup may be suffici ent in some settings. Copyright (C) 1997 by W.B. Saunders Company.