Purpose: To compare the accuracy with which simulated solitary pulmonary nodules can be identified on digital images of the chest that are unprocessed, processed with adaptive spatial filtering, or processed with global filtering.
Materials and methods: Six experienced chest radiologists evaluated 408 test radiographs (136 from each of the three types, half with simulated nodules) and judged whether a nodule was present. Data from the 2,448 observations were evaluated by means of a receiver operating characteristic curve with location methods.
Results: Accuracy was significantly better with the adaptive filter technique than with the global technique (P < .05), and it was better with adaptive filtering than with no processing in the detection of pulmonary nodules in the mediastinal-subdiaphragmatic areas (P < .05). No significant difference was found between no processing and global filtering.
Conclusion: Adaptive filtration is superior to global filtration in the identification of solitary pulmonary nodules and is superior to no processing in nodules projected over the radiopaque areas of the thorax on digital images.