The quality/safety medical index: a standardized method for concurrent optimization of radiation dose and image quality in medical imaging

Normalizing Heterogeneous Medical Imaging Data to Measure the Impact of Radiation Dose

The production of medical imaging is a continuing trend in healthcare institutions. Quality assurance for planned radiation exposure situations (e.g. X-ray, computer tomography) requires examination-specific set-ups according to several parameters, such as patient's age and weight, body region and clinical indication. These data are normally stored in several formats and with different nomenclatures, which hinder the continuous and automatic monitoring of these indicators and the comparison between several institutions and equipment. This article proposes a framework that aggregates, normalizes and provides different views over collected indicators. The developed tool can be used to improve the quality of radiologic procedures and also for benchmarking and auditing purposes. Finally, a case study and several experimental results related to radiation exposure and productivity are presented and discussed.

The quality/safety medical index: implementation and analysis

Medical analytics relating to quality and safety measures have become particularly timely and of high importance in contemporary medical practice. In medical imaging, the dynamic relationship between medical imaging quality and radiation safety creates challenges in quantifying quality or safety independently. By creating a standardized measurement which simultaneously accounts for quality and safety measures (i.e., quality safety index), one can in theory create a standardized method for combined quality and safety analysis, which in turn can be analyzed in the context of individual patient, exam, and clinical profiles. The derived index measures can be entered into a centralized database, which in turn can be used for comparative performance of individual and institutional service providers. In addition, data analytics can be used to create customizable educational resources for providers and patients, clinical decision support tools, technology performance analysis, and clinical/economic outcomes research.