The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2021 Mar 09

DOI: 10.23736/S1824-4785.21.03339-2

Copyright © 2021 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Perceptual omission errors in Positron emission tomography/Computed tomography reporting

Jeremy GODEFROY ¹ ✉, Simona BEN HAIM ^{1, 2, 3}, Eyal ROSENBACH ¹, Aaron N. MEITAL ¹, Adi LEVY ⁴, Alexandre CHICHEPORTICHE ¹, Rachel BAR-SHALOM ⁵

¹ Department of Nuclear Medicine and Biophysics, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel; ² Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel; ³ Institute of Nuclear Medicine, University College London and UCL Hospitals, NHS Trust, London, UK; ⁴ Department of Oncology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel; ⁵ Department of Nuclear Medicine, Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

BACKGROUND: Omission errors in medical imaging can lead to missed diagnosis and harm to patients. The subject has been studied in conventional imaging, but no data is available for functional imaging in general and for PET/CT in particular. In this work, we evaluated the frequency and characteristics of perceptual omission errors in the PET component of oncologic PET/CT imaging and we analyze the hazardous scenarios prone to such modality-specific errors.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Perceptual omission errors were collected in one tertiary center PET/CT clinic during routine PET/CT reporting over a 26-month period. The omissions were detected either in reporting follow-up PET/CT studies of the same patient or during multidisciplinary meetings.
RESULTS: Significant omission errors were found in 1.2 % of the 2100 reports included in the study. The most common omissions were bone metastases and focal colon uptake. We identified six PET-specific causative factors contributing to the occurrence of omissions, and we propose solutions to minimize their influence.
CONCLUSIONS: The data presented here can help to promote the awareness of interpreting physicians to body areas that require higher attention and to implement reading strategies for improving the accuracy of PET/CT interpretation.

KEY WORDS: PET/CT; Missed findings; Omission errors; Perceptual errors; Discrepancy