Digital chest x-ray CAD helps spot cancerous lung masses

March 4, 2008 Diagnostic Imaging. Digital chest x-ray CAD helps spot cancerous lung masses Technical refinements improve software’s sensitivity, but definitions of true and false remain tricky H. A. Abella -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer aided-detection can boost the accuracy of chest radiography for lung cancer, especially for some inexperienced readers. Although chest CT is the de facto imaging standard for lung cancer diagnosis, many hospitals still rely on digital or analog chest radiography for such diagnoses. Their confidence may be easier to justify when the radiographs are read with the help of CAD, as demonstrated by a clinical trial by radiologist Dr. Dorith Shaham and colleagues at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. Results were presented at the 2007 RSNA meeting. Shaham’s retrospective study involved 39 nodules greater than 5 mm that had been previously confirmed in 36 digital chest radiographs from health facilities in Europe and the U.S. Three radiologists with various levels of expertise—a resident, a general radiologist, and a thoracic radiologist—read the cases randomly and marked apparent lung masses and nodules greater than 5 mm. Readers relied on a prototype detection system that generated CAD marks for all DR images.

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