Abstract
BackgroundImaging repositories are commonly attached to ongoing clinical trials for efficiency and cost savings, but capturing, transmitting and storing images can be cumbersome and increase costs. Typical methods include outdated technologies such as compact discs. Electronic file transfer is becoming more common, but even this requires hours of staff time on dedicated computers in the radiology department.MethodsWe describe and test an image capture method using smartphone camera video images of brain computed tomography (CT) scans of traumatic intracranial hemorrhage. The deidentified videos are emailed from the emergency department for central adjudication. We selected eight scans, mild moderate and severe subdural and multicompartmental hematomas and mild and moderate intraparenchymal hematomas. Eighty videos were made by 10 people on 7 different smartphones. We measured the time in seconds it took to capture and email the files. The primary outcomes were hematoma volume measured by ABC/2, Marshal Scale, midline shift measurement, image quality by contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and time to capture. A radiologist and an imaging scientist applied ABC/2 method, calculated the Marshall scale and midline shift on the video images and on the PACS in a randomized order. We calculate the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). We measured image quality by calculating contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). We report summary statistics on time to capture in the smartphone group without a comparator.ResultsICC for lesion volume, midline shift and Marshall score were 0.991 (95% CI 0.976, 0.998), 0.998 (95% CI: 0.996, 0.999) and 0.973 (0.931, 0.994) respectively. Lesion conspicuity was not different among the image types via assessment of CNR using the Friedman test, Bof 10.6, P=.061, with a small Kendall’s W effect size (0.264). Mean (standard deviation) time to capture and email the video was 60.1 (24.3) seconds.ConclusionsTypical smartphones may produce video image quality high enough for use in a clinical trial imaging repository. Video capture and transfer takes only seconds, and hematoma volumes, Marshal scales and image quality measured on the videos did not differ significantly from those calculated on the PACS.