Objective
This proposal is directed towards the following research task as defined in area D.3.4 of the Work Programme for the CEC Fourth Framework Programme on Nuclear Fission Safety. It is twofold:
- Establish relationships between the radiological information content and image producing procedures (with equipment functioning and mechanisms of image analysis or interpretation).
- Develop optimization strategies adapted from adult to paediatric patients by deriving a specific technical-clinical basis for the quality criteria concepts.
The existing draft quality criteria documents prepared by CEC Study Groups for both adult and paediatric radiology are based on clinical and technical concepts:
* Diagnostic requirements which are expressed in terms of the degree of visibility of specified anatomical features thus allowing the subjective assessment of the diagnostic quality of images by radiologists without the need for special equipment (clinical concepts).
* Values for radiographic technique and equipment parameters which should allow the above image quality and patient dose criteria to be met (technical concepts).
All these criteria (apart from the dose) are based primarily on the judgement and experience of the expert radiologists who drafted the quality criteria documents. The analysis of CEC adult trials of quality criteria that have been performed so far to validate the recommended values have clearly shown the difficulty of establishing a significant statistical correlation between image quality and technical parameters used in performing a given x-ray examination. Two features make the situation crucial in paediatric radiology: the particular sensitivity of organs in young patients to radiation, and the wide variation of the patient body size.
The proposed project will focus mainly on clinical and technical concepts associated to chest and lumbar spine pediatric x-ray examinations. Use will be made of some dosimetric results provided by NRPB who is coordinating a project on the same area (' Development of dose reduction strategies in pediatric radiology ').
Work package 1 will be devoted to collecting and analysing data on chest and lumbar spine examinations in pediatric radiology: In a first step a detailed analysis of the radiological information content, with special focus on identifying image criteria responsible for rejection of films will be performed, based on an available image data base. A second phase of the proposed work will deal with the assessment of the quality of images obtained with a computer-controlled test phantom. A validation of those results will then be made against a clinical image data base.
Work package 2 will be devoted to identifying optimisation strategies using multidimensional statistical analysis together with multiattribute techniques. Experimental results of Work package 1 will be used with this approach. Special attention will be paid to the definition of the best filmscreen combinations suitable for the considered examinations. Finally image and technical criteria will be proposed for possible revision of existing CEC Pediatric Quality Criteria Document.
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
75019 Paris
France