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Awareness of quality needed in interpreting diagnostic information
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – An understanding of the quality of data collected by diagnostic instruments is important in interpreting that data, according to a speaker here. Consideration of patient characteristics is also critical in diagnostic imaging, said Susan Vitale, PhD, MHS, of the National Eye Institute.
“Often overlooked is being able to assess the quality of the image you obtain and to be able to interpret in that context,” Dr. Vitale said here at the inaugural meeting of the International Society for Imaging in the Eye.
She pointed out that it is critical to assess the quality of the summary data generated by diagnostic imaging devices.
“It is easy enough to put a patient in front of a machine and get an image that might be junky and have funny-looking summary parameters. But a lot of people don’t really know how to view those images and how to assess the value of the image they get. They look at the summary parameters that get spit out by the nice software and don’t really look at the raw data to assess how valuable it is,” she said.
Dr. Vitale noted that there are also patient characteristics that can affect imaging quality, including age, ethnicity, mental state (which can affect the ability to fixate) and eye characteristics, including pupil size, clarity and IOP level.
“You have to use the summary measurements because you have so many individual data points. Not only because it is easier to think about, but because each of those are subject to measurement error, and by combining them in some fashion you might reduce some of the noise of the measurement,” Dr. Vitale said. “The problem is, depending on how much aggregating of the data you do, you possibly lose some important data. The more smoothing you do, you might lose some, say, localized areas of loss in glaucoma.”
Dr. Vitale noted that the there has been a huge expansion in the use of imaging devices in studies as evidenced by their mention in the literature, and it is important to review the quality of images achieved by different diagnostic instruments.