Display colour scale effects on diagnostic performance and reader agreement in cardiac CT and prostate apparent...

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Radiology
• Diagnostic Performance

Background:

• Color scale selection is crucial for accurate medical image interpretation.
• Different color scales may influence diagnostic outcomes in computed tomography perfusion (CTP) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of different color scales (greyscale, hot-iron, rainbow) on diagnostic performance in CTP and prostate MRI.
• To assess how color scale choice affects clinician confidence and diagnostic accuracy.

Main Methods:

• Clinicians interpreted CTP and prostate MRI datasets using greyscale, hot-iron, and rainbow scales in separate sessions.
• Diagnostic performance was measured using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC).
• Reader agreement and selected imaging values were analyzed across color scales.

Main Results:

• Greyscale scales showed higher AUC for CTP detection (0.67) compared to rainbow (0.56).
• Greyscale also demonstrated the highest inter-reader agreement for ischaemic lesion categorization.
• A slight trend favored greyscale and rainbow scales over hot-iron for prostate tumor detection.

Conclusions:

• Color visualization demonstrably affects diagnostic performance in CTP and ADC imaging.
• Further research is needed to quantify the precise impact of color scales on various diagnostic tasks.