Usefulness of Temporal Subtraction for The Detection of Interval Changes of Interstitial Lung Diseases on Chest Radiographs

The evaluation of interval changes between temporally sequential chest radiographs is necessary for the detection of new abnormalities or interval changes, such as pulmonary nodules and interstitial disease. For interstitial lung disease, the interval changes are very important for diagnosis and treatment. Especially, interstitial lung disease may show rapid changes in the radiographs, show changes in the entire lung field in minute detail, or show changes in multiple parts depending on the type. It is therefore difficult to have an accurate grasp of the condition of the disease only with conventional radiographs. The temporal subtraction technique which was developed at the University of Chicago, provides a subtraction image of the current warped image and the previous image. A temporal subtraction image, shows only differences and changes between the two images, can be very useful for a diagnosis of interstitial lung disease. However, the evaluation of the temporal subtraction technique for interstitial lung disease using receiver operating characteristic(ROC) studies has not been reported yet. Therefore, we have evaluated the clinical usefulness of a temporal subtraction technique for detection of interval changes of interstitial lung disease by ROC analysis.