‘Driller’ rad residents beat their ‘scanner’ peers at identifying lung nodules
Radiology trainees do better at detecting lung nodules on CT when they’ve been taught to “drill” rather than “scan” the images, according to a study published Feb. 24 in Academic Radiology.
Drilling entails restricting eye movements to one small section of a CT image while quickly scrolling depth-wise through that section’s image slices.
Scanning involves scrolling more slowly through the depth of the slices while searching an entire level of the lung before moving on to the next level.
Lead author Anouk van der Gijp, MD, of UC-San Francisco, and co-authors compared the two methods as taught to 19 junior radiology residents randomized into two groups.
The team first had both groups complete a baseline lung nodule detection test allowing a free-search strategy. Then they instructed the trainees in either scanning or drilling and had them take a test.
Registering true positive (TP) and false positive (FP) scores along with scroll behavior, the researchers conducted a mixed-design analysis of variance to compare the three search conditions.
They found that scanning instruction resulted in significantly lower TP scores than drilling instruction or free search, while FP scores for drilling were significantly lower than for free search and TP scores for drilling did not significantly differ from free search.
“Teaching a drilling strategy is preferable to teaching a scanning strategy for finding lung nodules,” write the authors, who further found that search strategy instruction had a significant effect on scroll behavior.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.