Automated Hands-Free Image Manipulation and Viewing: A Useful Macro Feature that Assists Radiologists in the Viewing of Chest and Extremity Digital Radiographs

Abstract

The authors present an adaptation of the macro recording feature on the Siemens Magic View 1000 workstation, which, with the click of one button, launches a macro that performs 3 clinically useful image manipulations. Using a Magic View 1004 Siemens unix workstation, the following Macro sequence was programmed: (1) select all images, (2) reverse grayscale, (3) edge enhancement, (4) display full-resolution all screens, (5) reverse grayscale, (6) enable zoom/pan function. This sequence of commands takes 11 seconds to complete for a 2-view chest x-ray, and 16 seconds for a 3-view hand series. A pause occurs while the CPU performs the edge enhancement algorithm; this "pause" is used to provide time for the radiologist to assess the images. The time to implement and view these manipulations is reduced dramatically with the automatic viewing macro. More importantly, because the macro takes over the workstation operation, radiologist attention can be focused totally on image assessment and interpretation. Automatic hands-free image manipulation can improve the speed and accuracy of radiologist interpretation for both chest and extremity digital radiography.

Use of an Automated Image Processing Program to Quantify Recombinant Adenovirus Particles

“…Semiautomatic and completely automated image processing methods have been shown to be useful in biological science and medicine~Gatlin et al, 1993;Nelson et al, 2000;Swedlow et al, 2003!. For example, the automation of chromosome aberration scoring has reduced the burden of routine chromosome analysis for clinical diagnostics, thus allowing for unambiguous data acquisition and increased sample throughput~Coco-Martin et al, 1998!. For radiological studies, automated processing has been particularly useful in assisting in the viewing and interpretation of digital radiographs, such as magnetic resonance images of the brain and radiograph images of the chest and extremities~Huh et al, 2002;Koenker & Grover, 2002!. Digital imaging and processing has also created a driving interest in the use of microscopy for large-scale screening using informatics for the storage and analysis of microscope image data. For example, stored data sets of small molecules such as gene sequences along with related digital image recordings can be accessed in open databases, thereby bridging the gap between sequence and function~Mayer et al, 1999; Gonczy et al, 2000!.…”