A General Framework for Monitoring Image Acquisition Workflow in the Radiology Environment: Timeliness for Acute Stroke CT Imaging

Many facets of an image acquisition workflow leave a digital footprint, making workflow analysis amenable to an informatics-based solution. This paper describes a detailed framework for analyzing workflow and uses acute stroke response timeliness in CT as a practical demonstration. We review methods for accessing the digital footprints resulting from common technologist/device interactions. This overview lays a foundation for obtaining data for workflow analysis. We demonstrate the method by analyzing CT imaging efficiency in the setting of acute stroke. We successfully used digital footprints of CT technologists to analyze their workflow. We presented an overview of other digital footprints including but not limited to contrast administration, patient positioning, billing, reformat creation, and scheduling. A framework for analyzing image acquisition workflow was presented. This framework is transferable to any modality, as the key steps of image acquisition, image reconstruction, image post processing, and image transfer to PACS are common to any imaging modality in diagnostic radiology.