A Study on Image Quality In Teledermatology and Telepathology of Telemedicine Using a Digital Camera

Abstract

This dissertation entitled “A STUDY ON IMAGE QUALITY INTELEDERMATOLOGY AND TELEPATHOLOGY OF TELEMEDI-CINE USING A DIGITAL CAMERA” is based on the rating method in image of patient characteristics that affects whether the disease can bediagnosed or not. Telemedicine (Teledermatology and Telepathology) are being everincreasing popular and advanced. The use of teledermatology andtelepathology for clinical diagnosis are not always without risk becausesufficient images quality may not be there in images. To get sufficientdiagnostic information, sufficient quality of images must be used anddetection display and interpretation should be optimal. An image takendepends upon various factors and specially has an effect on diagnostic ofdisease. An optimized image procedure is one in which image quality ofpatient characteristics is properly balanced. In this context, a generalstudy of the image quality of image formation in diagnosticteledermatology and telepathology are the major works performed atDepartment of dermatology, TUTH, T.U., Kathmandu; KathmanduMedical College, K.U. Kathmandu and Health Net Maharajgunj,Kathmandu Nepal. In the test carried out to study the image quality of teledermatologyand telepatholgy (telehistology and telecytology), there were found thatthe gold standard for any specialist referred traditional way incase ofpathology viewing through microscope and in case of dermatology faceto face consultation remainsame with the image of diseased patient usedto diagnosis. 5 Here it was found that the area under the ROC curve fordermatology is0.922 means that a randomly selected individual from thepositive group has a test value larger than that for a randomly chosenindividual from the negative group by92% of the time. And for histologyand cytology area under ROC curve are 0.909 and 1.000 respectively.These larger area support high diagnostic accuracy through the highimage quality.Again the P-valuefor dermatology, histology and cytologyare respectively0.000,0.000 and0.001. Such that P is low i.e. P < 0.05which is statistically significant. Therefore, there is evidence that imagehas an ability to detect disease. Andwe also found that the correct test capacity of expert doctor inthe diagnosis of cases through image being high quality. For this, the P-value from SPSS output is0.000 such that P<0.005 which is statisticallysignificant again. So that for high accuracy of diagnostic test supports thatthe image quality is good. Finally this research says that the good image quality is necessary for correct diagnosis in teledermatology and telepathology. However,probably most important for the most part of telemedicine is far frombeing a mature discipline, and much work remains to be done to establishits place in health care delivery.