Testchart to compare dental radiographs printed on glossy paper from calibrated customary printers with monitor-display.

• source:
  DIN NA014-00-08-05AK_N0023_Manuskript_Druckerstudie.doc
• title:
  Quality of individually calibrated customary printers for assessment of typical dental diagnoses on glossy paper prints:
  A multicenter study
• editors:
  Schulze RKW, Schulze D, Voss K, Rottner M, Keller, Dollmann K, Maager B, Wedel M

abstract:

Objectives: To compare dental radiographs printed on glossy paper from calibrated customary printers with monitor-display.

Study Design: Three typical intra-oral radiographs were selected and a questionnaire was developed with questions assessing i) accuracy and ii) subjective quality. A test pattern was designed for printer calibration. After calibration, radiographs were printed on glossy paper with four ink-jet and one thermo-sublimation printer. 16 raters evaluated the printed radiographs, nine of them also on standardized viewing monitors. An ROC-analysis was performed using mean monitor rating as golden standard. Subjective ratings were compared also.

Results: Low inter-rater reproducibility (mean Cohen's Kappa monitor: 0.49; printers: 0.44), but high diagnostic accuracy was found for all printers (areas (Az) underneath the ROC-curves from 0.763 to 0.812). The overlap between the 95%-Az-confidence intervals of the mean indicate no significant differences.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that dental radiographs may be evaluated on glossy paper prints of calibrated customary printers.