In the rapidly evolving healthcare environment, radiologists strive to establish their rightful place.Thus, there is a need for enhanced outpatient and clinical education within the Department of Radiology and exploration of its methodologies. Accordingly, the Korean Society of Radiology established a task force to investigate the clinical and outpatient practice status of radiologists overseas, current state of related education, involvement of other specialties in radiologic practices and education in Korea, and clinical and outpatient practice status among Korean radiologists. Furthermore, a survey on clinical competency enhancement was conducted among the members of the Korean Society of Radiology. These findings suggest the need for visibility and clinical competency enhancement in radiologists and methodologies for strengthening clinical competencies.

In the rapidly evolving healthcare environment, radiologists strive to establish their rightful place.Thus, there is a need for enhanced outpatient and clinical education within the Department of Radiology and exploration of its methodologies. Accordingly, the Korean Society of Radiology established a task force to investigate the clinical and outpatient practice status of radiologists overseas, current state of related education, involvement of other specialties in radiologic practices and education in Korea, and clinical and outpatient practice status among Korean radiologists. Furthermore, a survey on clinical competency enhancement was conducted among the members of the Korean Society of Radiology. These findings suggest the need for visibility and clinical competency enhancement in radiologists and methodologies for strengthening clinical competencies.

In the rapidly evolving healthcare environment, radiologists strive to establish their rightful place.Thus, there is a need for enhanced outpatient and clinical education within the Department of Radiology and exploration of its methodologies. Accordingly, the Korean Society of Radiology established a task force to investigate the clinical and outpatient practice status of radiologists overseas, current state of related education, involvement of other specialties in radiologic practices and education in Korea, and clinical and outpatient practice status among Korean radiologists. Furthermore, a survey on clinical competency enhancement was conducted among the members of the Korean Society of Radiology. These findings suggest the need for visibility and clinical competency enhancement in radiologists and methodologies for strengthening clinical competencies.

To provide high-quality training to residents in a rapidly changing medical environment, it is very important to improve the annual training curriculum centered on competency and ensure that training hospitals maintain an environment suitable for training. The Korean Society of Radiology (KSR) has been steadily improving the training system and has suggested the improvement of the training system by strengthening the competency-based evaluation and faculty development. Currently, KSR was selected for the second annual training curriculum systematization construction project in July 2021, and developed entrustable professional activities, core competencies, and assessment guidelines required by the construction project. Therefore, the development process and assessment guidelines will be introduced to residents and the faculty.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of different types of mammography equipment on screening outcomes by comparing the performance of film-screen mammography (FSM), computed radiography mammography (CRM), and digital mammography (DM).MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively enrolled 128756 sets of mammograms from 10 hospitals participating in the Alliance for Breast Cancer Screening in Korea between 2005 and 2010. We compared the diagnostic accuracy of the types of mammography equipment by analyzing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) with a 95% confidence interval (CI); performance indicators, including recall rate, cancer detection rate (CDR), positive predictive value₁ (PPV₁), sensitivity, specificity, and interval cancer rate (ICR); and the types of breast cancer pathology.RESULTS: The AUCs were 0.898 (95% CI, 0.878–0.919) in DM, 0.860 (0.815–0.905) in FSM, and 0.866 (0.828–0.903) in CRM (p = 0.150). DM showed better performance than FSM and CRM in terms of the recall rate (14.8 vs. 24.8 and 19.8%), CDR (3.4 vs. 2.2 and 2.1 per 1000 examinations), PPV₁ (2.3 vs. 0.9 and 1.1%), and specificity (85.5 vs. 75.3 and 80.3%) (p < 0.001) but not in terms of sensitivity (86.3 vs. 87.4 and 86.3%) and ICR (0.6 vs. 0.4 and 0.4). The proportions of carcinoma in situ (CIS) were 27.5%, 13.6%, and 11.8% for DM, CRM, and FSM, respectively (p = 0.003).CONCLUSION: In comparison to FSM and CRM, DM showed better performance in terms of the recall rate, CDR, PPV₁, and specificity, although the AUCs were similar, and more CISs were detected using DM. The application of DM may help to improve the quality of mammography screenings. However, the overdiagnosis issue of CIS using DM should be evaluated.
Area Under Curve ; Breast Neoplasms ; Breast ; Carcinoma in Situ ; Korea ; Mammography ; Mass Screening ; Medical Overuse ; Pathology ; Radiography ; Retrospective Studies ; ROC Curve ; Sensitivity and Specificity

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the interpretive performance and inter-observer agreement on digital mammographs among radiologists and to investigate whether radiologist characteristics affect performance and agreement. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The test sets consisted of full-field digital mammograms and contained 12 cancer cases among 1000 total cases. Twelve radiologists independently interpreted all mammograms. Performance indicators included the recall rate, cancer detection rate (CDR), positive predictive value (PPV), sensitivity, specificity, false positive rate (FPR), and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Inter-radiologist agreement was measured. The reporting radiologist characteristics included number of years of experience interpreting mammography, fellowship training in breast imaging, and annual volume of mammography interpretation. RESULTS: The mean and range of interpretive performance were as follows: recall rate, 7.5% (3.3–10.2%); CDR, 10.6 (8.0–12.0 per 1000 examinations); PPV, 15.9% (8.8–33.3%); sensitivity, 88.2% (66.7–100%); specificity, 93.5% (90.6–97.8%); FPR, 6.5% (2.2–9.4%); and AUC, 0.93 (0.82–0.99). Radiologists who annually interpreted more than 3000 screening mammograms tended to exhibit higher CDRs and sensitivities than those who interpreted fewer than 3000 mammograms (p = 0.064). The inter-radiologist agreement showed a percent agreement of 77.2–88.8% and a kappa value of 0.27–0.34. Radiologist characteristics did not affect agreement. CONCLUSION: The interpretative performance of the radiologists fulfilled the mammography screening goal of the American College of Radiology, although there was inter-observer variability. Radiologists who interpreted more than 3000 screening mammograms annually tended to perform better than radiologists who did not.
Area Under Curve ; Breast ; Fellowships and Scholarships ; Mammography ; Mass Screening ; Medical Audit ; Observer Variation ; ROC Curve ; Sensitivity and Specificity

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to record and evaluate interobserver agreement as quality control for the modified categorization of screening breast ultrasound developed by the Alliance for Breast Cancer Screening in Korea (ABCS-K) for the Mammography and Ultrasonography Study for Breast Cancer Screening Effectiveness (MUST-BE) trial. METHODS: Eight breast radiologists with 4-16 years of experience participated in 2 rounds of quality control testing for the MUST-BE trial. Two investigators randomly selected 125 and 100 cases of breast lesions with different ratios of malignant and benign lesions. Two versions of the modified categorization were tested. The initially modified classification was developed after the first quality control workshop, and the re-modified classification was developed after the second workshop. The re-modified categorization established by ABCS-K added size criteria and the anterior-posterior ratio compared with the initially modified classification. After a brief lecture on the modified categorization system prior to each quality control test, the eight radiologists independently categorized the lesions using the modified categorization. Interobserver agreement was measured using kappa statistics. RESULTS: The overall kappa values for the modified categorizations indicated moderate to substantial degrees of agreement (initially modified categorization and re-modified categorization: κ=0.52 and κ=0.63, respectively). The kappa values for the subcategories of category 4 were 0.37 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24 to 0.52) and 0.39 (95% CI, 0.31 to 0.49), respectively. The overall kappa values for both the initially modified categorization and the re-modified categorization indicated a substantial degree of agreement when dichotomizing the interpretation as benign or suspicious. CONCLUSION: The preliminary results demonstrated acceptable interobserver agreement for the modified categorization.
Breast Neoplasms ; Breast ; Classification ; Education ; Humans ; Korea ; Mammography ; Mass Screening ; Observer Variation ; Quality Control ; Research Personnel ; Ultrasonography