Development and Evaluation of Interpretation Support Prototype System for Cardiovascular MDCT Imaging

Abstract

To improve cardiovascular MDCT imaging workflow, we developed an interpretation support system for cardiovascular MDCT imaging. The system can record information regarding the disease's location, nature of the plaque, and presence or absence of calcification. And also we developed an image classification method utilizing DICOM Tag to help radiologists to choose images for reading. To investigate whether a newly developed support system could reduce the time taken by radiologists to read coronary artery MDCT images, as well as improve diagnostic accuracy, a total of 20 studies (10 initial and 10 follow-up MDCT) were reviewed. As a result, the reading time for both readers was reduced by about 20%. The diagnostic concordance rate for disease's location was increased from 92% to 100%