3 ms·

They're pretty much all digital: no consumables and no giant filing system are big wins institutionally, and lower exposure is good for the patient too. Ten ye

They're pretty much all digital: no consumables and no giant filing system are big wins institutionally, and lower exposure is good for the patient too. Ten years ago, I brought a film over to a hospital, and someone had to pull a dusty, disused lightbox out of the closet so we could look at it. I can only imagine it's become even more electronic since then.

lostlogin 7y ago
> and lower exposure. Often, but not always and it also depends on the technology. Computed radiography got all the benefits of going digital, but allowed you to keep your X-ray equipment. Doses mostly went up. True digital requires new X-ray rooms and mostly reduced dose. However for this to occur it depends on the staff, as higher dose images look really nice (lower noise). There are also aspects of film radiography that have been very hard to achieve with digital. One that comes to mind is the examination of joints in rheumatology cases. The resolution of film screen systems is very hard to beat and small erosions are best seen with increased resolution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045190/#!po=1.25000 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045190/#!po=1....
hcknwscommenter 7y ago
It's all over the map. Personally, I have a very frustrating anecdote in that I got extensive x-rays on my toes by a podiatrist. He used a very sophisticated platform (at least from my POV) to show my layer by layer the damage to my toe joints and referred me to a surgeon. Multiple consults later, the best this surgeon could do (who also works with pro-sports teams at the highest level) was use microsoft paint to look at the x-ray images from the podiatrist to assay the damage. The Microsoft paint version was essentially a single flattened image which lost a huge amount of information. I suggested taking his own images thinking he would have a better way of looking at that data. Nope. Microsoft paint. He didn't seem to even have any idea how much information he was not getting despite multiple attempts to explain it to him. I am in an adjacent field so I know the lingo, but whatever surgeons just want to cut.

lostlogin 7y ago

> and lower exposure. Often, but not always and it also depends on the technology. Computed radiography got all the benefits of going digital, but allowed you to keep your X-ray equipment. Doses mostly went up. True digital requires new X-ray rooms and mostly reduced dose. However for this to occur it depends on the staff, as higher dose images look really nice (lower noise). There are also aspects of film radiography that have been very hard to achieve with digital. One that comes to mind is the examination of joints in rheumatology cases. The resolution of film screen systems is very hard to beat and small erosions are best seen with increased resolution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045190/#!po=1.25000 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045190/#!po=1....

hcknwscommenter 7y ago

It's all over the map. Personally, I have a very frustrating anecdote in that I got extensive x-rays on my toes by a podiatrist. He used a very sophisticated platform (at least from my POV) to show my layer by layer the damage to my toe joints and referred me to a surgeon. Multiple consults later, the best this surgeon could do (who also works with pro-sports teams at the highest level) was use microsoft paint to look at the x-ray images from the podiatrist to assay the damage. The Microsoft paint version was essentially a single flattened image which lost a huge amount of information. I suggested taking his own images thinking he would have a better way of looking at that data. Nope. Microsoft paint. He didn't seem to even have any idea how much information he was not getting despite multiple attempts to explain it to him. I am in an adjacent field so I know the lingo, but whatever surgeons just want to cut.