Clinical audit in the radiology department based on information theory

The authors develop techniques for auditing the quality of x-ray reports. In the radiology department, clinical audit generally implies multiple rereadings of selected films in order to define the findings that should be recognized and the departure from this standard for each radiologist. Techniques borrowed from information theory are used to measure the clinical information contributed by radiologists as they interpret chest radiographs. The reported findings are evaluated in the light of the ultimate discharge diagnosis. The scores generated quantify the information contributed to the final diagnosis by the radiologist's description. This approach was tested in a group of 100 two-view chest examinations. Five readers interpreted each set of films. Several measures of information content were generated. In addition, a traditional audit procedure was done