Agreement between objective and subjective assessment of image quality in ultrasound abdominal aortic aneurism screening

Objective: To investigate agreement between objective and subjective assessment of image quality of ultrasound scanners used for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening. Methods: Nine ultrasound scanners were used to acquire longitudinal and transverse images of the abdominal aorta. 100 images were acquired per scanner from which 5 longitudinal and 5 transverse images were randomly selected. 33 practitioners scored 90 images blinded to the scanner type and subject characteristics and were required to state whether or not the images were of adequate diagnostic quality. Odds ratios were used to rank the subjective image quality of the scanners. For objective testing, three standard test objects were used to assess penetration and resolution and used to rank the scanners. Results: The subjective diagnostic image quality was ten times greater for the highest ranked scanner than for the lowest ranked scanner. It was greater at depths of <5.0cm (odds ratio, 6.69; 95% confidence interval, 3.56, 12.57) than at depths of 15.1-20.0 cm. There was a larger range of odds ratios for transverse images than for longitudinal images. No relationship was seen between subjective scanner rankings and test object scores. Conclusion: Large variation was seen in the image quality when evaluated both subjectively and objectively. Objective scores did not predict subjective scanner rankings. Further work is needed to investigate the utility of both subjective and objective image quality measurements. Advances in knowledge: Ratings of clinical image quality and image quality measured using test objects did not agree, even in the limited scenario of AAA screening.