Improving diagnostic accuracy in assessing pulmonary edema on bedside chest radiographs using a standardized scoring approach.

Background: To assess the value of a score-based system which allows standardized evaluation of pulmonary edema on bedside chest radiographs (CXRs) under routine clinical conditions.

Methods: Seven experienced readers assessed bedside CXRs of ten patients with an extravascular lung water (EVLW)-value of ≤ 8 mL/kg (range: 4-8 mL/kg; indicates no pulmonary edema) and a series of ten patients with an EVLW-value of ≥ 15 mL/kg (range: 15-21 mL/kg; = indicates a pulmonary edema) with and without customized software which would permit a standardized assessment of the various indications of pulmonary edema. The software provides a score that identifies patients with and without pulmonary edema.

MyCases-a portable application for radiologic case collections.

Radiologists come across interesting patient cases almost every day. This work proposes a novel case database server for quick and easy storage of such cases including whole image series, patient data, and annotations. Cases can be added to the database by saving DICOM images into a predefined directory on the local network.