S. Kido et al., CLINICAL-EVALUATION OF PULMONARY NODULES WITH SINGLE-EXPOSURE DUAL-ENERGY SUBTRACTION CHEST RADIOGRAPHY WITH AN ITERATIVE NOISE-REDUCTION ALGORITHM, Radiology, 194(2), 1995, pp. 407-412
PURPOSE: To compare the clinical usefulness of the single-exposure dua
l-energy subtraction method with an iterative noise-reduction algorith
m. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fourteen radiologists read three sets of ima
ges from 44 patients: original computed radiographic images only, orig
inal computed radiographic images plus conventional bone-subtracted im
ages, and original computed radiographic images plus iterative noise-r
educed bone-subtracted images. Twenty-two patients had one or more (ma
ximum, five) pulmonary nodules; 22 had no pulmonary nodules. Observer
performance was evaluated by means of calculation of the average area
under the alternative free-response receiver operating characteristic
curves (Al). RESULTS: Compared with the original computed radiographic
image only, detection of nodules was significantly better with both t
he original computed radiographic image plus iterative bone-subtracted
image (A1 = 0.72 +/- 0.02 and 0.66 +/- 0.02, respectively; P = .01) a
nd the original computed radiographic image plus conventional bone-sub
tracted image (Al = 0.66 +/- 0.02 and 0.61 +/- 0.01, respectively; P =
.03). CONCLUSION: The iterative noise-reduction algorithm is superior
to conventional methods in detection of pulmonary nodules.