Digital imaging: What is it, how does it work, what should you buy? (Proceedings)

August 1, 2008

Victor T. Rendano Jr., VMD, MSc, DACVR, DACVR-RO

If you take excellent quality radiographs now, you may or may not like digital. If you take good quality radiographs now, you will like digital. If you take poor quality radiographs now, you will love digital.

What I have learned

• If you take excellent quality radiographs now-you may or may not like digital

• If you take good quality radiographs now-you will like digital

• If you take poor quality radiographs now-you will love digital.

• If all goes "right" you will love digital.

• If all goes not so right-you will hate digital.

• You will either need to be reasonably computer knowledgeable or you will spend the rest of your life relying on your support staff to do everything!

• It helps to have a local computer geek.

• It will take longer to review a series of radiographs.

• You better have a backup system to store your images.

• You will take more radiographs-often a lot more!

• You need to be aware of radiation safety.

• You will invest a reasonable amount to a large amount of money and you must figure a payback within three years (may be five years).

• A high speed internet connection is a good thing to have.

If you go digital

You will need:

• Radiographic unit

• Safety garb

• Proper patient positioning

• Computer work station

• Electronic storage

• Photographic printer

• Digital Processor and Cassette-CR

What you will no longer need:

• Wet chemical processor

• Conventional cassette/screen system

• Darkroom

• Radiographic viewers

Electronic imaging-Digital Imaging

CR-Computed Radiography

• Cassette (cassettes)

• Processor

• Computer

• Monitor

• Software

DR-Digital Radiography-flat panel

• Direct to Digital Receptor

• Computer

• Monitor

• Software

CCD-

• Direct to Digital Receptor

• Computer

• Monitor

• Software

DICOM-The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard for distributing and viewing any kind of medical image regardless of the origin.

http://medical.nema.org/

JPEG- ...JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). The JPEG compression format was standardized by ISO in August 1990 and commercial applications using it began to show up in 1991. The widely used IJG implementation was first publicly released in October 1991 and has been considerably developed since that time. JPEG JFIF images are widely used on the Web. The amount of compression can be adjusted to achieve the desired trade-off between file size and visual quality.

Issues and Considerations

Dicom vs. Other Formats

Digital Radiography Artifacts

Image Display

Acquisition Hardwre for Digital Imaging

Picture Archiving And Communication Systems (Pacs)

Digital Image Storage

Teleradiology

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