Demonstrating the impact and model of care of a Statewide psychiatric intensive care service.

Objective: To characterise patients and their outcomes following referral to a Statewide psychiatric intensive care service.

Method: This study conducted a medical audit for patients referred to the Statewide service during the first four years of operation (2007-2011). Demographics and the presence of alcohol and other drug and forensic comorbidities were documented along with the treatment received prior to and during admission.

Influence of CT image size and format on accuracy of lung nodule detection.

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of reducing image size on observers' ability to detect lung nodules on computed tomographic (CT) scans.

Materials And Methods: Stimuli were 80 single sections from 13 normal chest CT studies. On half of the images, 3-5-mm-diameter nodules were superimposed electronically at random locations.

Enhanced displays of medical images: evaluation of the effectiveness of color, motion, and contour for detecting and localizing liver lesions.

Rationale And Objectives: Many perceptual studies have shown that the detection of large, low-contrast targets is better either in color or in contrast-reversing presentations than in standard gray scale. We determined the value of several new display techniques for viewing liver computed tomography (CT) scans.

Methods: Eight observers (four radiologists and four nonradiologists) viewed sets of 100 liver CT images (50 with lesions and 50 without) under five display conditions on a Macintosh computer: (1) color (equiluminant color contrast); (2) color-luminance (combined luminance and chromatic contrast); (3) flicker (luminance contrast that reversed polarity at 2 Hz); (4) contour (shaded intensity mapping); and (5) control (conventional gray scale).