Assessment and optimisation of the image quality of chest-radiography systems

A complete evaluation strategy had been developed for thoracic X-ray imaging. It has been validated by investigating five chest-radiography systems, two of these systems after optimising image processing. The systems were a screen-film combination, a selenium drum, a conventional and a transparent imaging plate and a Cs/I-based flat panel detector (the two latter ones have been optimised using different post processing). At first all detectors have been characterised using physical parameters like DQE and MTF. After that all systems have been evaluated by human observer studies using anatomy in clinical images (VGA, ICS) and added pathological structures in thoracic phantom images (ROC). The ranking of the image quality of the systems was nearly the same in all studies. There was a similar assessment of main image quality parameters like spatial resolution, dynamic range and MTF. The modification of image post processing changed the visibility of pathological structures more than the visualisation of the anatomical criteria. The assessment of the clinical image quality has to be done for anatomical structures, and the recognition of pathological structures has to be evaluated.