Purpose: Increasing CT capacity to keep pace with rising ED demand is critical. The conventional process has inherent drawbacks. We evaluated an off-console automated AI enhanced workflow which moves all final series creation off-console.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNecrotizing Fasciitis (NF) is a rare, but highly lethal, rapidly progressive necrotic infection of the soft-tissue fascia. More common in immunocompromised patients, NF typically affects the extremities, perineal area, genital area (Fournier gangrene), and less commonly the torso. Although classically a clinical diagnosis, imaging is a powerful adjunct to facilitate early diagnosis in equivocal cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Noncontrast CT (NCCT) is used to evaluate for intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and ischemia in acute ischemic stroke (AIS). Large vessel occlusions (LVOs) are a major cause of AIS, but challenging to detect on NCCT.
Aims: The purpose of this study is to evaluate an AI software called RAPID NCCT Stroke (RAPID, iSchemaView, Menlo Park, CA) for ICH and LVO detection compared to expert readers.
Purpose: CT is the gold standard for triaging critically ill patients, including in trauma, and its use has increased over time. CT turnaround times (TATs) are frequently targeted for improvement. As opposed to linear reductionist processes such as Lean and Six Sigma, a high-reliability organization (HRO) approach focuses on culture and teams to enable rapid problem solving.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven the demands of a busy high-volume trauma center, trauma radiologists are expected to evaluate an enormous number of images covering a multitude of facial bones in a short period of time in severely traumatized patients. Therefore, a comprehensive checklist, search pattern, and practical approach become indispensable for evaluation. Moreover, fracture complex classification conveys abundant information in a succinct shorthand fashion, which can be a large asset in a busy high-volume trauma center: reliably helping clinicians communicate urgent findings, make early treatment decisions, and effectively plan surgical approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate radiology imaging volumes at distinct time periods throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as a function of regional COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Methods: Radiology imaging volumes and statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations were collected, and four 28-day time periods throughout the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 were analyzed: pre-COVID-19 in January, the "first wave" of COVID-19 hospitalizations in April, the "recovery" time period in the summer of 2020 with a relative nadir of COVID-19 hospitalizations, and the "third wave" of COVID-19 hospitalizations in November. Imaging studies were categorized as inpatient, outpatient, or emergency department on the basis of patient location at the time of acquisition.
J Stroke Cerebrovasc Dis
July 2021
Purpose: To compare physicians' ability to read Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS) in patients with a large vessel occlusion within 6 hours of symptom onset when assisted by a machine learning-based automatic software tool, compared with their unassisted score.
Materials And Methods: 50 baseline CT scans selected from two prior studies (CRISP and GAMES-RP) were read by 3 experienced neuroradiologists who were provided access to a follow-up MRI. The average ASPECT score of these reads was used as the reference standard.
Purpose: To implement a more efficient standardized computed tomography (CT) protocoling system for emergency department (ED) patients in order to improve resident work satisfaction and wellness, and decrease lag time between ordering and protocoling a study.
Methods And Materials: Residents recorded lag times between time of order and time of protocol for 176 CT scans between November 2018 and January 2019. Pre- and postintervention resident surveys of 7 questions utilizing a 5-point Likert scale were used to assess the perceived efficiency and overall satisfaction with the protocolling system.
To compare utilization of CT pulmonary angiogram (CTA) for diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE) in an emergency department (ED) with unstructured CT ordering to published rates of CT positivity in other EDs including those employing decision support and to identify pathways for improved utilization via collaboration with our pathology and ED colleagues. Two hundred seventeen patients over a 2.5-month time period who received a CTA for PE were reviewed with exclusion of pediatric patients and all sub-optimal, non-diagnostic, or equivocal scans; 21 were excluded leaving a sample of 196 patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence suggests that normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is underdiagnosed in day to day radiologic practice, and differentiating NPH from cerebral atrophy due to other neurodegenerative diseases and normal aging remains a challenge. To better characterize NPH, we test the hypothesis that a prediction model based on automated MRI brain tissue segmentation can help differentiate shunt-responsive NPH patients from cerebral atrophy due to Alzheimer disease (AD) and normal aging. Brain segmentation into gray and white matter (GM, WM), and intracranial cerebrospinal fluid was derived from pre-shunt T1-weighted MRI of 15 shunt-responsive NPH patients (9 men, 72.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To characterize the MRI features of the petromastoid canal in children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and in normal infants.
Materials And Methods: High resolution MRI examinations of 564 children who were evaluated for SNHL and brain MRI examinations of 112 infants who had normal studies were studied independently by two reviewers.
Results: In SNHL group, visibility of the PMC decreased for right and left PMC (P < 0.
The aim of this study was to assess for an association between radiologists' turnaround time (TAT) and report quality for emergency department (ED) abdominopelvic CT examinations. Reports of 60 consecutive ED abdominopelvic CT studies from five abdominal radiologists (300 total reports) were included. An ED radiologist, abdominal radiologist, and ED physician independently evaluated satisfaction with report content (1-10 scale), satisfaction with report clarity (1-10 scale), and extent to which the report advanced the patient on a previously published clinical spectrum scale (1-5 scale).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To compare histogram analysis of voxel-based whole-lesion (WL) enhancement to qualitative assessment and region-of-interest (ROI)-based enhancement analysis in discriminating the renal cell cancer (RCC) subtype clear cell RCC (ccRCC) from papillary RCC (pRCC).
Materials And Methods: In this institutional review board-approved, HIPAA-compliant retrospective study, 73 patients underwent magnetic resonance (MR) imaging prior to surgery for RCC between January 2007 and January 2010. Three-dimensional fat-suppressed T1-weighted gradient-echo corticomedullary phase acquisitions, obtained before and after contrast agent administration, were transferred to a workstation at which automated registration followed by semiautomated segmentation of the RCC was performed.
Purpose: Past studies have identified a high frequency of recommendations for additional imaging (RAI) for computed tomography (CT) studies performed in an emergency department (ED), thereby potentially contributing to increased imaging utilization and costs. The purpose of this study was to compare rates of RAI within the ED setting between ED-based and organ-based subspecialty radiologists.
Methods: We identified 600 ED CT studies, comprising 200 head, chest, and abdominal CT studies, split equally between cases reviewed by ED-based and organ-based radiologists.
Despite recent trends toward evaluation of back and neck pain with magnetic resonance imaging, myelography and postmyelography computed tomography continue to play an important role in the workup of many patients with spinal pathology. We present techniques for the safe and efficient performance of myelography, lumbar, and cervical puncture, which remain important skills to be mastered by radiology residents and fellows.
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