Ambient temperature variation affects radiological diagnostic performance

No guidelines currently exist for optimum ambient temperature during radiology reporting. The objective of this study is to determine whether changes in ambient temperature effect performance during radiological detection tasks. Ambient temperatures and humidity were measured in 11 radiological reporting environments. Observers were then asked to assess CT images at 18°C, 21°C and 23°C. Thirty non-contrast cranial CT images, 15 with Intra cranial bleeds and 15 without were used. A ROC analysis was performed. The shortest time taken to assess the images was recorded at 18°C which took 10.5 (sd 4.07) seconds per image this was significantly shorter than 21°C which took 14.93 seconds (sd 3.87) (p ≤ 0.017). There is a trend of increasing sensitivity with decreasing temperature with 18, 21 and 23°C resulting in sensitivity values of 0.52, 0,42 and 0.37 respectively, with 18°C (0.52 sd 0.21) resulting in significantly higher sensitivity than 23°C (0.37 sd 0.14) (p ≤ 0.030).