[First clinical experience with a full-size, flat-panel detector for imaging the peripheral skeleton - Part II: Post-processing with a newly developed adaptive autowindow algorithm]

PURPOSE

of the second part of the investigation was the evaluation of a newly developed adaptive autowindow algorithm in comparison to the system processing radiographs of the wrist and ankle to further optimize the image quality with softcopy reading.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

All 120 radiographs of the wrist and all 100 radiographs of the ankle used in the 1st part of this paper were processed with the adaptive autowindow algorithm. The evaluation was again performed by 5 radiologists with softcopy reading. For the data analysis a variation of the Visual Grading Analysis (VGA) was used.

RESULTS

Up to 19 % of the wrist radiographs and 2 % of the ankle radiographs processed with the system software had to be processed manually afterwards to get acceptable results. By the application of the adaptive autowindow algorithm a manual post-processing was no longer necessary. Highly significant (p less-than-or-equal 0.001) differences for all criteria to be evaluated were found for the wrist radiographs and in the case of the ankle radiographs for the bone contrast, the contrast in soft-tissue regions, the fine details in the bone and the artifacts, the adaptive autowindow algorithm performed always better than the system software.

CONCLUSION

Using half of the exposition dose on a flat-panel detector, an optimized post-processing leads to comparable or better results compared to the conventional film-screen-system concerning the image quality.

[First clinical experience with a full-size, flat-panel detector for imaging the peripheral skeletal system]

PURPOSE

This investigation was intended to show that exposures of the peripheral skeleton system can be done with half of the dose used for conventional screen-film systems with a full-size CsI/a-Si flat panel detector. MATERIAL AN METHODS: 120 exposures of the wrist and 100 exposures of the ankle have been made on a full-size flat panel detector system (43 x 43 cm). The patient dose has been reduced by a factor of two compared to conventional images. Five radiologists evaluated every image as a softcopy and a hardcopy image. For the evaluation, a variation of the Visual Grading Analysis (VGA) without reference images was used. For the determination of the patient entrance dose, measurement of a phantom were performed.

RESULTS

A dose reduction of about 50 % is possible with the same or even better image quality in routine diagnostics. Only 3 % of the ankle and approx. 21 % of the wrist exposures required a postprocessing. Exposures with implants did not show any artifacts and some of the those achieved better evaluation results compared with exposures without implants.

CONCLUSION

A halving of the patient dose is possible with acceptable results for the image quality. The effect of an improved image processing remains to be evaluated. The patient entrance dose is suitable for an evaluation of a radiographic detector and especially for a dose-referred comparison of digital X-ray units.

[Recording of data and immediate interpretation of myoelectric activity of the stomach--electrogastrography]

Unlike other electrophysiological measurements such as electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalography (EEG), the cutaneous measurement of the electrical activity of the stomach (electrogastrography, EGG) is not an established clinical diagnostic procedure. To overcome common problems in acquiring very-low-frequency signals in the presence of large and unstable voltages we developed a real time data acquisition and analysis system based on linear-phase digital signal processing instead of analog filtering. FFT's computed on line from highly overlapping time sets are displayed as pseudo-3D or grey-scale graphic plots.