Tuesday, March 5, 2013

ViewDex for research study in Diffusion weighted MRI of MSK

        The result section in every research is the evidence to support any clam, theory or thesis. In diagnostic imaging and radiology research, the result section could frequently be image based and have to be converted into numbers of expert opinions and judgments which explains the finding. ViewDex (Viewer for Digital Evaluation of X-ray images) is a tool that is used in research to facilitate such a step. It is a Java-based software for presentation and evaluation of medical images in observer performance.


        This is important for my research because it manages the large amount of images that I acquire into a simplified program for radiologist to view. This program also views images randomly so no radiologist can see them in the same order this results in objectiveness in diagnosis and more accuracy. Not mentioning that there will be no need for papers as the program provides criteria on the side of each image group (Green planet friendly). I recommend this program for image based research because it is a time saver and a good way to catalogue findings specifically in MR imaging.






Reference:

1. Håkansson M., Svensson S., Zachrisson S., Svalkvist A., Båth M., Månsson L. G. ViewDex 2.0: a Java-based DICOM-compatible software for observer performance studies. Proc. SPIE.2009;7263:72631G.1–72631G.10



About the writer



Muna Al-Mulla, a Kuwaiti medical imaging technologist who graduated from Kuwait University, college of Allied Health with a B.Sc. in Diagnostic Imaging. 

Muna worked as a radiographer in Al Sabah Hospital, Diagnostic Radiology Department. She; then, decided to move Dublin to continue her education in the same field. There, Muna gained her MSc in MRI imaging. Muna is now working on her Ph.D in the area of "Diffusion weighted MRI of Musculoskeletal" with a team of students and researchers in UCD Health sciences center.






2 comments:

Henry said...

Hi Muna,

I am Henry from the University of Queensland, and I'm looking to use ViewDex in a study comparing CT scans to digital tomosynthesis scans. When using ViewDex, I'd like radiologists to be able to measure items on the scans and enter in the exact distance as a response to be recorded by ViewDex. However, it appears that ViewDex only supports discrete checkboxes for recording responses. As you have good experience with using ViewDex, I was wondering if you knew of any way to enable the recording of continous data as a response in ViewDex?

Thanks very much for your time,
Henry

Muna AlMulla said...

Hi Henry,

Thank you for reading my post, to answer your query:

I believe that viewdex is design to facilitate easy VGA of a large group of images, by that i think mostly scaling and rating. the program does allow simple image manipulations to be done (ww/wL, zoom ect). I cannot say if measurements are possible, however, you can contact the main site am sure they will help you more. for my research i used the program for image rating, all my measurements were done on a viewer like (DICOM, OSIRIX, EMV). viewdex is java based and i think it needs a little computer know how to manipulate.

i hope this helped.

kind regards,
Muna

am sure you have read this but am adding an abstract, From DOI: 10.1117/12.811511 :

ViewDEX is managed and configured by editing property files, which are plain text files where users, tasks (questions, definitions, etc.) and functionality (WW/WL, PAN, ZOOM, etc.) are defined. ViewDEX reads all common DICOM image formats and the images can be stored in any location connected to the computer. ViewDEX 2.0 is designed so that the user in a simple way can alter if the questions presented to the observers are related to localization or not, enabling e.g. free-response ROC, standard ROC and visual grading studies, as well as combinations of these, to be conducted in a fast and efficient way. The software can also be used for bench marking and for educational purpose

Graphic Design - Blog for Graphic Designers