Purpose or Case Report: We describe a method of rapidly viewing age- and gender-matched normal musculoskeletal radiographic images for comparison during routine reading at the workstation. We created a plugin for the Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) that added a new option in the contextual menu. When the new option was selected, the plugin obtains information about the currently displayed exam. The patient’s gender and age (in years and months) and the type of study (e.g. humerus or ankle) are extracted and the plugin opens a new window. The window displays age- and gender-matched studies of the same body part from a database of normal images for rapid review by the user. The database consists of 35,514 images from 10,540 musculoskeletal examinations that were interpreted as normal by staff radiologists. Patients younger than two years of age are matched by months. The user may adjust the desired age and study type. The window displays the images in a grid with thumbnails. Users may choose to review the normal examples in full resolution. The images are displayed in a window adjacent to the PACS, permitting side-by-side comparison. Typical use cases display around 30 comparison examinations with approximately 90 images as a result.
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