A Comparison of WebRTC and Conventional Videoconferencing for Synchronized Remote Medical Image Presentation.

DICOM viewers must fulfill roles beyond primary diagnostic interpretation, including serving as presentation tools in teaching and multidisciplinary conferences, thereby enabling multiple individuals to review images collaboratively in real time. When in-person gathering is not possible, a variety of solutions have been deployed to maintain the ability for spatially separated users to view medical images simultaneously. These approaches differ in their backend architectures, utilization of application-specific optimizations, and ultimately in their end user satisfaction. In this work, we systematically compare the performance of conventional screensharing using a videoconferencing application with that of a custom, synchronized DICOM viewer linked using Web Real Time Communications (WebRTC) technology. We find superior performance for the WebRTC method with regard to image quality and latency across a range of simulated adverse network conditions, and we show how increasing the number of conference participants differentially affects the bandwidth requirements of the two viewing solutions. In addition, we compare these two approaches in a real-world teaching scenario and gather the feedback of trainee and faculty radiologists, who we found to favor the WebRTC method for its decreased latency, improved image quality, ease of setup, and overall experience. Ultimately, our results demonstrate the value of application-specific solutions for the remote synchronized viewing of medical imaging, which, given the recent increase in reliance on remote collaboration, may constitute a significant consideration for future enterprise viewer procurement decisions.

COVID-19 Crisis Effect: Experience at Two Orthopedic Trauma Units.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) crisis has affected how hospitals work and has had an effect on orthopedic surgery. OBJECTIVES: To compare patient management and low-energy and high-energy trauma treatment at two orthopedic trauma units during the COVID-19 crisis and to clarify resource demands and preparedness in orthopedic clinics during the state of emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: This retrospective study was conducted at two orthopedic trauma units from 14 March 2019 to 14 April 2019 and from 14 March 2020 to 14 April 2020. RESULTS: The proportion of patients admitted in the multi-trauma orthopedic unit decreased by one-third, the mean time interval from admission to surgery significantly decreased, and the number of surgeries and mean length of stay in hospital decreased in 2020 compared to the same test period in 2019. In the orthopedic trauma unit, the number of patients and surgeries also decreased. CONCLUSIONS: Our study highlights changes in orthopedic injury characteristics in two orthopedic units during the COVID-19 crisis in Latvia and compares these changes to data from the same time period one year earlier.

Changes in Social Media Impact of the Radiological Literature During the Covid-19 Pandemic.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to determine how the social media impact of the radiological literature has changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. METHODS: Altmetric Attention scores were collected for all articles in five leading radiology journals over a 5-year period ending in June 2020, and temporal smoothing yielded the filtered Altmetric Attention (fAA) score. Natural language processing methods were used to label articles with major topic areas. A forecasting model was used to identify periods of outlier behavior in the fAA score aggregated across all journals, for each journal individually, and stratified by article topic area. The distributions of fAA scores prior to the onset of the pandemic were statistically compared to those during the pandemic. For journals exhibiting increased fAA scores, the frequency distributions of articles not related to Covid-19 was compared to that prior to the pandemic. RESULTS: During the pandemic, we found sustained outliers and statistically significant increases in the aggregate fAA score across all five journals, as well as for Radiology, American Journal of Roentgenology, and Academic Radiology individually. Articles related to Covid-19, thoracic imaging, and radiology education also experienced significantly increased fAA scores during the pandemic period. We did not find significantly decreased rates of publication of non-Covid articles in the journals experiencing elevated fAA scores. CONCLUSION: Social media engagement with the radiological literature significantly increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. This preferentially affected certain journals and articles addressing specific topics, reflecting the intense public interest in the diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19.