Abstract
Digital chest radiography is still the most common radiological examination. With
the upcoming three-dimensional (3D) acquisition techniques the value of radiography
seems to diminish. But because radiography is inexpensive, readily available, and
requires very little dose, it is still being used for the first-line detection of
many cardiothoracic diseases. In the last decades major technical developments of
this 2D technique are being achieved. First, hardware developments of digital radiography
have improved the contrast to noise, dose efficacy, throughput, and workflow. Dual
energy acquisition techniques reduce anatomical noise by splitting a chest radiograph
into a soft tissue image and a bone image. Second, advanced processing methods are
developed to enable and improve detection of many kinds of disease. Digital bone subtraction
by a software algorithm mimics the soft tissue image normally acquired with dedicated
hardware. Temporal subtraction aims to rule out anatomical structures clotting the
image, by subtracting a current radiograph with a previous radiograph. Finally, computer-aided
detection systems help radiologists for the detection of various kinds of disease
such as pulmonary nodules or tuberculosis.
Keywords
digital radiography - detectors - image processing - advanced processing - dual energy
subtraction - digital bone suppression - temporal subtraction - computer-aided detection
