Is reject analysis necessary after converting to computed radiography?
Reject analysis is an accepted standard of practice for quality assurance in conventional radiology. The need for reject analysis has been challenged by the introduction of computed radiography (CR) because of low reported reject rates and because criteria for improperly exposed images were lacking. Most CR systems include quality control (QC) workstations that are capable of modifying the appearance of images before release, and also of deleting poor images before they are analyzed. Texas Children’s Hospital has been using computed radiography since October 1995, and now conducts essentially filmless imaging operations using a large-scale picture archival and communications system (PACS) with fourteen CR units. The QC workstation is a key element of our CR operation; however, the extensive software tools of the workstation are limited in terms of avoiding repeated examinations. Neither the QC workstation nor the PACS itself is designed to support reject analysis, so our task was to de
