Smartphones for Mobile Teleradiology in Paediatric Imaging: Evaluation of Diagnostic Accuracy.

Teleradiology is a useful practice to provide remote consultation from specialists or senior staff, when no staff is available "on-site", and a quick consultation or a second opinion is necessary. Recently smartphones with high quality display have been marketed. The aim of our study was to determine if these devices could be used for paediatric radiologic remote consultation without loss of diagnostic information. Ninety-three paediatric exams were evaluated. CT and MRI examinations were randomly chosen among performed exams and sent to two different smartphones (Apple iPhone and Nexus One -Android OS-) using a VPN encrypted connection. Two independent radiologists evaluated the images prospectively. Results were collected in a database and compared with the gold standard result (PACS system, EBIT Aet DICOMed Review v.4.1, and monitors officially certified for radiologic interpretation). Concordance between diagnostic interpretation using smartphones and the golden standard was 97.52%. Values of specificity and sensitivity were respectively 100% and 96.3%, with a PPV of 100% and a NPV of 93.0%. Missing findings were only minor ones, while the overall diagnostic interpretation was essentially the same. These preliminary results show that diagnostic accuracy of radiologic paediatric interpretation using smartphones is overall acceptable. Although such system is not suitable for long consultation sessions, they can be used for quick remote consultation on single cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]