[Interstitial lung diseases. A comparative study between a film-screen combination and a digital storage phosphor...

Chest examinations were carried out in 60 individuals using film-screen and digital storage phosphor techniques and identical radiation doses. 29 of these individuals were patients with interstitial pulmonary disease; 31 were normals. Postprocessing of the digital images was carried out with filtering using an unsharp mask and identical parameters for all patients. An ROC analysis using 10 observers showed no significant difference in the evaluation of the interstitial lung disease. Correlation analysis showed a significant positive correlation (p less than 0.001) for the findings in both techniques. Under the present circumstances, film-screen and digital storage phosphor technique are of equal value in the diagnosis of interstitial pulmonary disease.