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Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor—a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyse medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it’s run on Mac or PC.
The finding is completely crazy, and casts doubt over the way many scans—such as CT and MRI—are analysed in routine practice.
A team of German researchers took data from 30 brain scans and analysed them using a package called FreeSurfer—one of the major medical image analysis programs, which can be used to measure the size of different parts of the brain.
They ran the software on Windows, and also on Macs running different versions of Mac OS, each time using the software to measure the size and thickness of various structures of the brain. They found that not only did Windows and Mac OS installs of the software throw up different results—but the version of Mac OS also had an impact.
Across most sections there was at least a 2-5 percent variation in the answers. But in the parahippocampal and entorhinal cortex, the answers diverged by as much as 15 per cent. A 15 per cent variation just because of a Mac OS update. The results appear in PLoS One.
Sadly, it’s not clear why the problem arises. Indeed, that’s something that medical professionals and software developers need to work on—and quick. Because it’s a terrifying idea that a single piece of software that can be used to measure parts of the brain—including tumors—can throw up different results after even a simple operating system update.
That means that not only might different hospitals choose to treat patients differently, but the same hospital could in theory change its diagnosis as a result of an IT upgrade.
As NeuroSkeptic points out, it would be wrong to lay the blame solely at the feet of the software developers behind FreeSurfer, because this is probably a wide-spread problem across other imaging platforms, too. But regardless of whose fault it is, something needs to happen to address the problem, and the sooner, the better. [PloS One via NeuroSkeptic]
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2 Questions arise here
1. Which one is the correct answer?
2. Why not use the master race! Linux
I was going to say it’s also available for Linux. I guess the Linux one must be the best one as it is used to scanning people with bigger brains.
Yes! Its Available on all Debian Releases and installed with a Quick Key stroke of Sudo Apt-get Install FreeSurfer
Just tell me that the mac is messing up results please and not somehow producing more accurate ones. We’d never hear the end of that!
clearly people who use linux need more brain scans due to the need to continually monitor their brain damage
Yes but that brain damage keeps the world turning, everything vital is linux or linux based
Not everything vital is linux based.
My lungs are pretty vital, they’re not linux based at all
haha lies….
I would guess that the one that makes people’s brains look bigger are Macs, as most Mac owners i know seem to think they are smarter than everyone else.
something basic like the DPI? Apple uses a higher DPI, or they used to.
PPI (rather than DPI) has no effect on absolute measurements.
I think I’d be right in saying that most NHS hospitals in the UK use Windows across the board but the private sector are probably more diverse in terms of IT. However, a lot of private healthcare still takes place in NHS hospitals. Still worrying though.
“Sadly, it’s not clear why the problem arises”
The problem is the gamma shift between Windows and OS X (and between different versions of OS X).
Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t trust my brain to freeware. It’s not that I associate free with being crap but rather there’s less incentive for it to be better.
Have you seen some of the crap that comes out that isnt free software? Just because theres less incentive for it to be better, people still need to use it, hell some countries only teach linux at school, no Mac and no Windows, so there is really a big incentive. Linux is a much more stable platform and it really does surprise me that places still use Windows for important stuff like this, Mac is a big step in the right direction i wil admit, but Linux is really what they should be using, now if a person can do brain surgery… Using Linux should be a breaze for them
You don’t seem to understand my point. A piece of medical software that costs thousands of pounds is more likely to be perfect, and if it isn’t it will quickly be made so. The makers of FreeSurfer however are under no obligation to support their application or to even make sure it works in the first place, this article is a testament to that.
I would suspect that the problem is more based around calibration of the entire display system, rather than being particular to an operating system or monitor. My company works in medical imaging, and we’re currently undertaking a large evaluation project after we realised that you could see features on a Mac laptop that were not apparent on a Dell monitor.
Once you look into it, then room lighting, brightness, contrast, gamma correction and even the desktop setup, that is the colour of the window the image is in, make a big difference. Unless you standardise then measurements that rely on fine judgement will vary.
It’s probably only a matter of time before a radiologist makes a diagnosis from their phone or home computer and makes an error because it’s not calibrated and controlled. The flipside is that many, many people will benefit from the opinion of a radiologist *because* she’s able to make that call without driving in. That’s probably, but not definitely, a net good.
I wasn’t implying one was better than the other BTW, just their setup is radically different as standard.
I just working out a solution on my Etch-a-sketch, the maths led to an understandable conclusion.
Hmm… You write software for two platforms. On both platforms it works fine. One platform updates, and it still works fine. The other platform updates and now something is wonky.
It’s the platform’s problem.
That is what my Etch-a-sketch result was, Macs are shite.