Detection of small pulmonary nodules using direct digital radiography and picture archiving and communication systems.

Purpose: To evaluate the detection of small pulmonary nodules, in the diameter range of 5.4 to 15 mm, using direct digital chest imaging and soft copy interpretation on picture archiving and communication systems.

Materials And Methods: The results of clinical computed tomography (CT) scans of the thorax were retrospectively reviewed from our radiology information system and picture archiving and communication systems archives.

Guidelines for management of small pulmonary nodules detected on CT scans: a statement from the Fleischner Society.

Lung nodules are detected very commonly on computed tomographic (CT) scans of the chest, and the ability to detect very small nodules improves with each new generation of CT scanner. In reported studies, up to 51% of smokers aged 50 years or older have pulmonary nodules on CT scans. However, the existing guidelines for follow-up and management of noncalcified nodules detected on nonscreening CT scans were developed before widespread use of multi-detector row CT and still indicate that every indeterminate nodule should be followed with serial CT for a minimum of 2 years.

Lung nodule detection on chest CT: evaluation of a computer-aided detection (CAD) system.

Objective: To evaluate the capacity of a computer-aided detection (CAD) system to detect lung nodules in clinical chest CT.

Materials And Methods: A total of 210 consecutive clinical chest CT scans and their reports were reviewed by two chest radiologists and 70 were selected (33 without nodules and 37 with 1-6 nodules, 4-15.4 mm in diameter).

Reduced radiation for adult thoracic CT: a practical approach.

Purpose: To determine whether radiation dose to patients can be reduced for clinical thoracic CT scans without loss of diagnostic information.

Materials And Methods: One hundred consecutive patients having clinical CT examinations of the thorax were included. The patients were divided into 4 groups, and the mAs setting determined from the patient's weight as follows (max.

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).

Over the past 2 decades, groups of computer scientists, electronic design engineers, and physicians, in universities and industry, have worked to achieve an electronic environment for the practice of medicine and radiology. The radiology component of this revolution is often called PACS (picture archiving and communication systems). More recently it has become evident that the efficiencies and cost savings of PACS are realized when they are part of an enterprise-wide electronic medical record.

Automatic detection of small lung nodules on CT utilizing a local density maximum algorithm.

Increasingly, computed tomography (CT) offers higher resolution and faster acquisition times. This has resulted in the opportunity to detect small lung nodules, which may represent lung cancers at earlier and potentially more curable stages. However, in the current clinical practice, hundreds of such thin-sectional CT images are generated for each patient and are evaluated by a radiologist in the traditional sense of looking at each image in the axial mode.