An automated patient recognition method based on an image‐matching technique using previous chest radiographs in the picture archiving and communication system environment

Abstract

An automated patient recognition method for correcting "wrong" chest radiographs being stored in a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) environment has been developed. The method is based on an image-matching technique that uses previous chest radiographs. For identification of a "wrong" patient, the correlation value was determined for a previous image of a patient and a new, current image of the presumed corresponding patient. The current image was shifted horizontally and vertically and rotated, so that we could determine the best match between the two images. The results indicated that the correlation values between the current and previous images for the same, "correct" patients were generally greater than those for different, "wrong" patients. Although the two histograms for the same patient and for different patients overlapped at correlation values greater than 0.80, most parts of the histograms were separated. The correlation value was compared with a threshold value that was determined based on an analysis of the histograms of correlation values obtained for the same patient and for different patients. If the current image is considered potentially to belong to a "wrong" patient, then a warning sign with the probability for a "wrong" patient is provided to alert radiology personnel. Our results indicate that at least half of the "wrong" images in our database can be identified correctly with the method described in this study. The overall performance in terms of a receiver operating characteristic curve showed a high performance of the system. The results also indicate that some readings of "wrong" images for a given patient in the PACS environment can be prevented by use of the method we developed. Therefore an automated warning system for patient recognition would be useful in correcting "wrong" images being stored in the PACS environment.

Investigation of misfiled cases in the PACS environment and a solution to prevent filing errors for chest radiographs1

“…The two images were used for the prospective study for determining whether the two images in a patient's folder belonged to the same patient or different patients. Because the automated patient recognition and identification method does not require high-resolution images, the image matrix size was reduced from the original size of 1760 ϫ 1760 to 64 ϫ 64 by use of a bilinear interpolation in order to reduce the computation time for the correlation value (9). The correlation value indicates the degree of resemblance between the two images.…”

Computer-Aided Nodule Detection on Digital Chest Radiography: Validation Test on Consecutive T1 Cases of Resectable Lung Cancer

“…CAD has a potential to make great progress in the future by linking imaging equipment such as computed radiography (CR) or flat-panel detectors (FPD) to PACS. 13, 14 The purpose of our study was to evaluate the usefulness of a commercially available CAD system on operable T1 cases by using digital chest radiography equipment.…”

A novel method for radiotherapy patient identification using surface imaging

“…Previous work has looked at the use of automated patient recognition tools in a picture archiving and communication system to identify patients based on correlations of chest radiographs and showed the feasibility of this approach (14) . Lamb et al (15) explored patient identification in the radiation oncology setting by means of comparing paired planar radiographic images to reference images in a 2D‐3D registration process.…”