FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 02, 2003
Contact: Arlene Carver Holmes,+1.703.709.3505
PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM JOHNS HOPKINS’ HARD COPY VERSUS SOFT COPY MAMMOGRAPHY STUDY ANNOUNCED
Herndon, VA — VIDAR Systems Corporation, the leading manufacturer of medical film digitizers, announces preliminary results of a mammography clinical study conducted at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, comparing radiologists’ interpretations of the original hard copy films with the readings of the digitized film on a softcopy display workstation.
Following a comparison of general radiographic films with digitized images produced by a VIDAR DiagnosticPRO™ plus film digitizer, researchers in the Department of Radiology at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions conducted a study of mammography examinations. The protocol included a comparison of the diagnostic interpretations of the original films with those from the digitized film images read on a soft copy display workstation. Four radiologists at Johns Hopkins interpreted the 60 selected mammography examinations in accordance with the American College of Radiology’s BIRADS guidelines. For quality assurance, four other radiologists at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences read a fifty percent sample of the examinations.
The results for BI-RADS assessment categories and diagnostic difficulty of examinations have been verified and tests of significance performed. In both instances there were no significant differences in the percent distributions by the two display modes when they were compared for the 360 readers’ ratings.
According to Dr. Joseph Gitlin, associate professor in the Department of Radiology at Johns Hopkins, and principal investigator of the study, “These results should be encouraging to providers who are interested in using digitized films for mammography, and soft copy workstations for display and interpretation. If further comparisons of relevant parameters in the study provide similar findings, and other investigators confirm the results, providers of mammography services will be able to rely on digitizing previous films for comparison with digital images from current examinations and to utilize computer aided diagnostic techniques which may increase the accuracy of interpretations”.
Brian Beardslee, vice president of VIDAR, said, “We expect that the results of this clinical study and those of previous clinical studies, provide evidence of the image quality of the VIDAR DiagnosticPRO plus . film digitizer. This superior image quality when combined with the highest reliability in the industry, is why all of the leading PACS and mammography CAD companies have made our products part of their systems solutions. We expect that this study will be replicated at other institutions and that it will encourage radiologists to consider performing primary readings from digitized films, specifically using VIDAR’s film digitizers”.
The authors expect to complete the study this summer and submit the results for publication in a peerreviewed journal. In addition, preliminary results will presented at the SCAR 2003 Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, June 7-10, 2003 and copies will be available at Booth #309.
VIDAR Systems Corporation, a privately held technology company headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, is the leading manufacturer of x-ray film digitizers serving the PACS, remote primary diagnosis, teleradiology, telemedicine, mammography, and oncology markets. VIDAR’s digitizers are the choice of more than 100 systems solution providers.
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