Last month, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) hosted the world’s foremost radiology conference attracting nearly 55,000 medical professionals and industry leaders to the largest convention center in North America, Chicago’s McCormick Place. The conference attendees represented countless nationalities and viewpoints of the latest trends in imaging.
Being the centennial celebration of the annual forum, RSNA 2014 not only presented the key milestones met over the past 100 years in the field of radiology, but also showcased the newest technological innovations that will impact the industry for years to come.
We present some of the technology highlights that came out of RSNA 100.
LATEST IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES
Dose monitoring for patients and staff
The DoseWise Portal is a comprehensive radiation dose management software solution aimed at managing radiation exposure risk to patients and their caregivers. This solution enables healthcare providers to proactively record, analyze and monitor imaging radiation dose for patients and clinicians across multiple diagnostic settings. Philips DoseWise Solutions include a comprehensive portfolio of products and services, including ClarityIQ, IMR and DoseAware, that enable healthcare providers to implement a broad and comprehensive dose management strategy. Philips
The Clinical Collaboration Platformuses Carestream’s intelligent Vue Archive to save and exchange clinical content in DICOM and/or non-DICOM formats, managing multiple archives at once. This solution incorporates Carestream’s MyVue patient portal to give patients secure data access and sharing capabilities. Embedding Carestream’s Vue Motion zero-footprint viewer into an organization’s EMR gives physicians convenient access to 3D/MPR images, interactive reports and video streaming from their mobile devices or workstations. Teleconsultancy and data exchange through HIE are also supported. Carestream
Share DR technology
The RadPRO DELINIA 200 Digital X-ray Acquisition Cart can deliver high-quality imaging and help accelerate exams by providing results within seconds using the installed X-ray generator in an existing radiography room or a mobile generator, without the need for cabling or special interfacing. The cart comes equipped with a computer, access point, touchscreen monitor, detector holder and a choice of the Canon CXDI-701C, CXDI-801C or CXDI-401C Wireless DR system. Canon U.S.A.
Coordinated care in full view
The Centricity Clinical Archive is a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) solution that serves as the foundation for a coordinated care network, giving care teams across the enterprise access to data to enhance their efficiency. This newest release unifies and manages patient images and enterprise content intelligently and includes mobile image capturing and architecture for compliant accessibility to patient records from an external system. This solution includes: Centricity Enterprise Archive, Universal Viewer ZFP, Caradigm eHIE, Centricity Clinical Gateway, NextGate MatchMetrix EMPI and PACSGEAR PacsSCAN. GE Healthcare
Next-gen PACS is all about workflow
The latest enhancements to Merge PACS have been specifically designed to support enterprise health systems and teleradiology, aiming to improve operational workflow and interoperability. By directly integrating with the iConnect Enterprise Archive, Merge PACS 7.0 provides access to all studies available for a patient, eliminating the need for pre-fetching. This solution delivers composite worklists for reading efficiency, cacheless PACS operations on an industry-leading VNA and workflows that can be accelerated using macros with other applications. Merge Healthcare
4,000 PACS installations and counting
Fujifilm has reached an important milestone in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems history: 4,000 Synapse PACS system installations worldwide. The latest version of the company’s cornerstone Synapse PACS solution focuses on enhanced communication and optimized productivity in any imaging environment. Enhancements include Synapse Communications, which features Peer Review, Critical Results, Emergency Department Findings and Pulse to track all important study activities. Fujifilm is also working on integration capabilities with other radiology and EHR third-party vendors to optimize workflow. FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A.
3D viewing gets more accessible
WebWorks 3D is an optional add-in for BRIT Systems WebWorks zero-footprint image browser. The 3D tools include viewing a 3D rendering that can be rotated, magnification, cross-reference and locate tools, measurement tools and snapshot tools so an image can be saved as DICOM to the server for others to view. WebWorks provides browser-based viewing to any DICOM-capable PACS and VNA, supports federating timelines across multiple DICOM servers and can be made available via URLs (links) from within EMRs. BRIT Systems
IR and CT in one solution
As the first seamless integration between interventional radiology (IR) and CT technology, the all-new Infinix CTprovides clinicians with faster, safer and more accurate interventions. Using this combination, healthcare providers can plan, treat and verify in a single clinical setting for better patient care – and significant time savings. This solution delivers real-time CT images during interventions instead of CT-like images, improving workflow while providing seamless and automatic transition between modalities. Toshiba America Medical Systems
IMAGING
What a radiologist wants
A new study from independent health research company MarkeTech Group sheds light on the needs, wants and wishes of radiologists when it comes to reading imaging results. The effort was sponsored by visualization technology solutions specialist Barco.
The survey of 223 radiologists, distributed across Europe (France, Germany and the U.K.) and North America, aimed to answer the question, “What makes a good read – and a good reading experience?” Results focused on image quality, workflow and ergonomics.
While some results seem predictable, such as 91 percent of respondents cite image quality as the single most important aspect of a medical display, other parts of the study illuminate how radiologists really use their equipment – and how it could be improved.
In MarkeTech’s sample, 60 percent of radiologists overall routinely use a mix of color and grayscale displays. Of European respondents, 63 percent read both digital mammography and color PACS. In the U.S., this number is significantly higher (84 percent). To work more efficiently, 92 percent of surveyed radiologists propose faster image loading and manipulation. A larger screen surface (78 percent) and the ability to load both color and grayscale images on one screen (66 percent) are considered important potential improvements as well.
While it is little surprise that 87 percent of radiologists experience physical discomfort such as eye fatigue, neck strain and back pain when reading images for long stretches, they have ideas of how to make things better. The most popular solutions cited are an easy-to-adjust stand (83 percent) and increased ambient room lighting (81 percent), followed closely by reduced screen glare (72 percent) and keyboard task lighting (69 percent).
