Improvement in radiologists' detection of clustered microcalcifications on mammograms. The potential of computer-aided diagnosis.
Relatively simple, but important, detection tasks in radiology are nearing accessibility to computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) methods. The authors have studied one such task, the detection of clustered microcalcifications on mammograms, to determine whether CAD can improve radiologists' performance under controlled but generally realistic circumstances. The results of their receiver operating characteristic (ROC) study show that CAD, as implemented by their computer code in its present state of development, does significantly improve radiologists' accuracy in detecting clustered microcalcifications under conditions that simulate the rapid interpretation of screening mammograms. The results suggest also that a reduction in the computer's false-positive rate will further improve radiologists' diagnostic accuracy, although the improvement falls short of statistical significance in this study.
Chan
H P
HP
Kurt Rossmann Laboratories for Radiologic Image Research, University of Chicago, Illinois.
Doi
K
K
Vyborny
C J
CJ
Schmidt
R A
RA
Metz
C E
CE
Lam
K L
KL
Ogura
T
T
Wu
Y Z
YZ
MacMahon
H
H
D002114:Calcinosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D008327:Mammography / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015588:Observer Variation; D012372:ROC Curve; D014963:X-Ray Intensifying Screens