Technical note: Four-year experience with utilization of DICOM metadata analytics in clinical digital radiography practice.

Background: Digital radiography (DR) still presents many challenges and could have complex imaging acquisition and processing patterns in a clinical practice hindering quality standardization.

Purpose: This technical note aims to report the 4-year experience with utilizing a custom DICOM metadata analytics program in clinical DR at a large institution.

Methods: Thirty-eight DR systems of three vendors at multiple locations were configured to automatically send clinical DICOM images to a DICOM receiver.

Practical application of AAPM Report 270 in display quality assurance: A report of Task Group 270.

Published in January 2019, AAPM Report 270 provides an update to the recommendations of the AAPM's "TG18" report. Report 270 provides new definitions of display types, updated testing patterns, and revised performance standards for the modern, flat-panel displays used as part of medical image acquisition and review. The focus of the AAPM report is on consistent image quality and appearance, and how to establish a quality assurance program to achieve those two goals.

Pictorial Review of Digital Radiography Artifacts.

Visual familiarity with the variety of digital radiographic artifacts is needed to identify, resolve, or prevent image artifacts from creating issues with patient imaging. Because the mechanism for image creation is different between flat-panel detectors and computed radiography, the causes and appearances of some artifacts can be unique to these different modalities. Examples are provided of artifacts that were found on clinical images or during quality control testing with flat-panel detectors.

Dose reduction in helical CT: dynamically adjustable z-axis X-ray beam collimation.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to measure the dose reduction achieved with dynamically adjustable z-axis collimation.

Materials And Methods: A commercial CT system was used to acquire CT scans with and without dynamic z-axis collimation. Dose reduction was measured as a function of pitch, scan length, and position for total incident radiation in air at isocenter, accumulated dose to the center of the scan volume, and accumulated dose to a point at varying distances from a scan volume of fixed length.