Structured reporting of CT enterography for inflammatory bowel disease: effect on key feature reporting, accuracy across training levels, and subjective assessment of disease by referring physicians

Purpose: To compare the content and accuracy of structured reporting (SR) versus non-structured reporting (NSR) for computed tomographic enterography (CTE) of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Materials and methods: This IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant, retrospective study included 30 adult subjects (15 male, 15 female; mean age 41.9 years) with IBD imaged with CTE. Nine radiologists (3 faculty, 3 abdominal imaging fellows, and 3 senior radiology residents) independently interpreted all examinations using both NSR and SR, separated by four weeks. Reports were assessed for documentation of 15 key reporting features and a subset of 5 features was assessed for accuracy. Thirty faculty reports (15 NSR [5 per reader] and 15 SR [5 per reader]) were randomly selected for review by three referring physicians, who independently rated quality metrics for each report. Results: NSR documented the presence or absence of 8.2 ± 2.2 key features, while SR documented 14.6 ± 0.5 features (p < 0.001). SR resulted in increased documentation of 13 of 15 features including stricture (p < 0.001), fistula (p < 0.001), fluid collection (p = 0.003), and perianal disease (p < 0.001). Among a subset of five features, accuracy for diagnosing multifocal disease was minimally increased when using SR (76% NSR vs. 83% SR; p = 0.01), but accuracy for other features was not affected by report type. Referring physicians significantly preferred SR based on ease of information extraction (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Structured reporting of CTE for IBD improved documentation of key reporting features for trainees and faculty, though there was minimal impact on accuracy. Referring physicians subjectively preferred the structured reports.