[Effects of 3-megapixel and 5-megapixel monitors on detecting micro-calcification in high- and low-resolution breast...

To evaluate the influence of 3- and 5-megapixel medical professional monitors in detecting the micro-calcifications on high- and low-resolution breast images, we performed a retrospective study in low- (n = 100) and high-resolution (n = 100) data, including 40 micro-calcification patients in a group and 60 normal ones in control group respectively. Two doctors, one junior, and the other senior, reviewed all the images without knowing the clinical data and histology, and their observations of each image with different monitors were calculated. The areas under the ROC curves (Az) were compared. Finally, the interpretation consistency of the two doctors was assessed using Kappa analysis. In the low resolution data group, the two doctors' detection performance of breast micro-calcifications were very similar in the 3M and 5M medical professional monitors (P = 0.451 and 0.559). In the high resolution group, however, the senior doctor's recognition rate on the 5M monitor was significantly higher than that on the 3M (P = 0.022), while the junior's recognition rate had no significant difference (P = 0.141) between the two readings. The two doctors' interpretation consistency on 5M monitor was better than that on 3M monitor. For the high-resolution images on the 5M monitor, the interpretation of the two doctors had extremely great consistency (K = 0.862). Therefore, different breast images of different resolutions should match corresponding resolution monitor. Interpretation of high-resolution images with 5M monitor has more advantages in the micro-calcification detection for senior doctors.