Meetings » 5th CTUG Meeting » Evaluation of AutoQA Lite™ image auality measurement software

Evaluation of AutoQA Lite™ image auality measurement software

Andrew J Reilly

Edinburgh Cancer Centre

Abstract

The IRIS Inc AutoQA Lite™ package is capable of performing a fully automated analysis of CT images of a range of CT phantoms, including those in the Catphan series (410, 412, 424, 440, 500), the InnerVision (Toshiba) phantom and the Siemens QA phantom. In this presentation, 18 months' experience using a loan copy of the software to analyse Catphan 500 images is described.

An overview of the AutoQA Lite™ software is presented, along with the context in which the Catphan 500 is used in our centre. The software is then evaluated against 5 broad criteria: (i) software installation, (ii) import of CT images, (iii) quality, accuracy and robustness of image analysis and results reporting, (iv) retrospective trend analysis, and (v) overall impressions of the package. To fully assess the accuracy of the measurement algorithms a range of test scenarios is considered, simulating alignment errors and other situations which might arise during testing.

It was found that the software is only able to analyse a particular format of DICOM file (implicit VR little-endian). However, once images are correctly imported into the system the software is generally robust and produces results in good agreement with those found by external analysis. AutoQA LiteTM is extremely quick and would be a useful tool for analysis of images as part of a routine QA programme. Although it is possible to fine-tune the software for particular requirements there is only limited potential for extending it to undertake measurements other than those provided automatically.

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