Comparison of human observers and CDCOM software reading for CDMAM images

Contrast-detail analysis is one the most common way for the assessment of the performance of an imaging system. Usually, the reading of phantoms, such as CDMAM, is obtained by human observers. The main drawbacks of this practice is the presence of inter-observer variability and the great amount of time needed. However, software programs are available, for reading CDMAM images in an automatic way. In this paper we present a comparison of human and software reading of CDMAM images coming from three different FFDM clinical units. Images were acquired at different exposures in the same conditions for the three systems. Once software has completed the reading, the interpretation of the results is achieved on the same way used for the human case. CDCOM results are consistent with human analysis, if we consider figures such as COR and IQF. On the other hand, we find out some discrepancies along the CD curves obtained by human observers, with respect to those estimated by automated CDCOM analysis.