Aims and objectives
The typical evaluation include clinical evaluation,
manual assessment of the mobility of the fracture fragments and interpretation of radiographs [2,6-8,10,11,14].
The fracture healing assessment based on interpretation of radiograms in a daily busy outpatient clinic may use several scoring methods [6-8,14].
Plain radiographs are still in use.
Digitization of radiographs is most frequently used in dental research [1-5,9,12,13,15].
Digital radiograms are used for fracture healing assessment using dedicated applications.
Digitization may enhance the assessment with use of web-based tools [6].
The aim of this study...
Methods and materials
Forty-five radiographs of long bone shaft fractures were digitized and assessed.
Each pair of images was analyzed with web-based tools and individually assessed.
Optical density of each image was measured using Orthopaedic Intelligence ™.
Raters were surveyed on the image quality assessment in order to use images for fracture healing evaluation.
Results
Optical density curve values for camera photos were higher than for scanner (p<.0001).
Pearson’s coefficients correlation between the corresponding values showed positive and significant (r varied from 0.58 to 0.38,
p<.02).
Scanned images showed better and significant correlation (r=0.35,
p=0.0168).
Images obtained from camera in terms of resolution were favored in 31.11%.
Details visibility on images from the camera was noted as superior in 18.88% responses.
Gwet’s agreement coefficient (AC) for all raters was 0.464 (SE 0.034; 95% CI 0.396 - 0.532).
Conclusion
Despite some difference of optical density values measured for both digitization methods raters agreed to consider both methods comparable in order to use them for fracture healing evaluation
Personal information
Acknowledgement: This project is supported by grant number N403 171340 from the National Science Centre.
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