Streamlining image quality assurance with the technique logger in the example case of radiograph scratch artifacts.

a m “ o o t t m p d DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM With continuously increasing focus on quality in health care, devising mechanisms to monitor, enforce, and improve quality standards is paramount. Facilitating real-time communication and documentation of technical issues requires innovative solutions, often best produced using informatics tools. Working under onerous productivity expectations, radiologists must have an efficient means to relay technical issues to staff members, in a way that can be tracked and audited. As such, recurrent problems can be readily identified and more expeditiously addressed. As an example, at a facility within our hospital system, we were experiencing a high rate of linear scratchlike artifacts across our radiographs, initially of uncertain origin (Fig. 1). The artifact was clearly not related to dirt or another contaminant and followed no overtly discernible pattern. Although not all radiographs were affected, the artifact appeared multiple times per day, often enough to frustrate interpreting radiologists—subjectively, as frequently as 1 in 4 or 5 x-rays.