Image quality for five modern chest radiography techniques: a modified FROC study with an anthropomorphic chest phantom.

The purpose of the study was to compare the image quality for one conventional and four digital chest radiography techniques. Three storage phosphor systems, one selenium drum system, and one film-screen system were compared using a modified receiver-operating-characteristics method. Simulated pathology was randomly positioned over the parenchymal regions and the mediastinum of an anthropomorphic phantom. Eight observers (four chest radiologists, one specialist in general radiology, one hospital physicist, and two radiographers) evaluated 60 images for each technique. The selenium drum system (Philips, Eindhoven, The Netherlands) rated best for the detection of parenchymal nodules. Together with the storage phosphor system of generation IIIN (Philips/Fuji), the selenium drum system also rated best for detection of thin linear structures. The storage phosphor system of generation V (Fuji) rated best for the detection of mediastinal nodules. The first generation of the storage phosphor system from Agfa (Mortsel, Belgium) rated worst for the detection of parenchymal nodules and thin linear structures. These differences were significant (p < 0.0001). Averaging the results for all test objects, the selenium drum system and the storage phosphor system of generation V were significantly better than the other systems tested. The film/screen system performed significantly better than the first-generation storage phosphor system from Agfa, equal to the generation IIIN storage phosphor system (Philips/Fuji) and significantly worse than the selenium drum system (Philips) and the generation-V storage phosphor system (Fuji). The conclusion is therefore that the image quality of selenium-based digital technique and of the more recent generations of storage phosphor systems is superior to both conventional technique and storage phosphor systems using image plates of older types.