Implementation and evaluation of a protocol management system for automated review of CT protocols.

This article describes our experiences in the implementation and evaluation of this protocol monitoring system. In particular, we discuss various strategies for addressing each of the steps in our protocol-monitoring workflow, which are: maintaining an accurate set of master protocols, retrieving protocols from the scanners, comparing scanner protocols to master protocols, reviewing flagged differences between the scanner and master protocols, and updating the scanner and/or master protocols. In our initial evaluation focusing only on abdo-men and pelvis protocols, we detected 309 modified protocols in a 24-week trial period. About one-quarter of these modified protocols were determined to contain inappropriate (i.e., erroneous) protocol parameter modifications that needed to be corrected on the scanner. The most frequently affected parameter was the series description, which was inappropriately modified 47 times. Two inappropriate modifications were made to the tube current, which is particularly important to flag as this parameter impacts both radiation dose and image quality. The CT protocol changes detected in this work provide strong motivation for the use of an automated CT protocol quality control system to ensure protocol accuracy and consistency.
PMID: 27685112 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics - September 30, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Grimes J, Leng S, Zhang Y, Vrieze T, McCollough C Tags: J Appl Clin Med Phys Source Type: research