The purpose of this study is to explore whether reader characteristics are linked to heightened levels of diagnostic
performance in chest radiology using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and jackknife free response ROC
(JAFROC) methodologies. A set of 40 postero-anterior chest radiographs was developed, of which 20 were abnormal
containing one or more simulated nodules, of varying subtlety. Images were independently reviewed by 12 boardcertified
radiologists including six chest specialists. The observer performance was measured in terms of ROC and
JAFROC scores. For the ROC analysis, readers were asked to rate their degree of suspicion for the presence of nodules
by using a confidence rating scale (1-6). JAFROC analysis required the readers to locate and rate as many suspicious
areas as they wished using the same scale and resultant data were used to generate Az and FOM scores for ROC and
JAFROC analyses respectively. Using Pearson methods, scores of performance were correlated with 7 reader
characteristics recorded using a questionnaire. JAFROC analysis showed that improved reader performance was
significantly (p≤0.05) linked with chest specialty (p<0.03), hours per week reading chest radiographs (p<0.03) and chest
readings per year (p<0.04). ROC analyses demonstrated only one significant relationship, hours per week reading chest
radiographs (p<0.02).The results of this study have shown that radiologist's performance in the detection of pulmonary
nodules on radiographs is significantly linked to chest specialty, hours reading per week and number of radiographs read
per year. Also, JAFROC is a more powerful predictor of performance as compared to ROC.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.