-
- Raj Kamal, Manjula Singh, Sudipto Roy, Tulsi Adhikari, Anil Kumar Gupta, Hari Singh, Vishnu Vardhan Rao, Samiran Panda, A M Khan, and Balram Bhargava.
- Clinical Division, ICMR-National Jalma Institute for Leprosy & Other Mycobacterial Diseases, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.
- Indian J Med Res. 2023 Feb 1; 157 (2&3): 204210204-210.
Background & ObjectivesChest X-ray (CXR) is an important screening tool for pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Accessibility to CXR facilities in difficult-to-reach and underserved populations is a challenge. This can potentially be overcome by deploying digital X-ray machines that are portable. However, these portable X-ray machines need to be validated before their deployment in the field. Here, we compare the image quality of CXR taken by a newly developed handheld X-ray machine with routinely used reference digital X-ray machine through the conduct of a feasibility study.MethodsA total of 100 participants with suspected pulmonary TB were recruited from the outpatient departments of a medical college and a community health centre in Agra. Each participant underwent CXR twice, once with each machine. Both sets of de-identified images were independently read by two radiologists, who were blinded to the type of X-ray machine used. The primary outcome was agreement between image qualities produced by these two machines.ResultsThe intra-observer (radiologist) agreements regarding the status of the 15 CXR parameters ranged between 74 per cent and 100 per cent, with an unweighted mean of 87.2 per cent (95% confidence interval: 71.5-100). The median Cohen's kappa values for intra-observer agreement were 0.62 and 0.67 for radiologists 1 and 2, respectively. In addition, on comparison of the overall median score of quality of the image, the handheld machine images had a higher score for image quality.Interpretation & ConclusionsThe current study shows that a handheld X-ray machine, which is easy to use and can potentially be carried to any area, produces X-ray images with quality that is comparable to digital X-ray machines routinely used in health facilities.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.