Dual energy digital chest radiography: A comparison with screen-film imaging in the detection of simulated nodules

Additional studies have been carried out to compare the performance of an optimized conventional chest unit and a dual-energy subtraction digital chest unit (ESU) in the detection of uncalcified and calcified simulated nodules. Previously, a significant improvement in the detection of calcified and uncalcified nodules was observed for the ESU. The present study addresses two aspects of the method that were not included in the previous study, namely the influence of ESU film format size on observer performance and the performance of the ESU single-energy mode (conventional digital) versus the conventional chest system. Free-response observer curves (FROC) for the two types of nodules were generated for the conventional, standard digital (half-size), and standard digital (full-size) film formats