Perceptual omission errors in positron emission tomography and computed tomography reporting.

Background: Omission errors in medical imaging can lead to missed diagnosis and harm to patients. The subject has been studied in conventional imaging, but no data is available for functional imaging in general and for PET/CT in particular. In this work, we evaluated the frequency and characteristics of perceptual omission errors in the PET component of oncologic PET/CT imaging, and we analyzed the hazardous scenarios prone to such modality-specific errors.