Medical Imaging Equipment 101

With the shift from medical imaging done on film to digital medical imaging, advances in medical imaging equipment have become legion. There are some basics with which you will want to familiarize yourself, because they are so routinely used in today's modern hospitals, imaging centers and other medical facilities. The use of Dicom format, the mini pacs and the pacs viewer can be found in both small and large medical facilities, and speed has been enhanced by some of them utilizing the power of the Internet.

Dicom stands for Digital Imaging and Communications In Medicine, and it is a medical image format similar to jpeg. It was necessary to create a new digital format specifically designed for medical applications, and thus Dicom was born. Dicom allows users to integrate workstations, servers, scanners, printers and networks into a PACS system. PACS refers to a picture archiving and communication system. A Pacs system allows a medical office to store, retrieve, distribute and view digital medical images. Thus, a Dicom appliance allows a personal computer to be transformed into the digital workhorse of the medical office.

Computer experts have come up with different ways of utilizing digital imaging in a medical context. Candelis ImageGrid offers a pacs system that uses Dicom format to enhance the efficiency of the daily work performed at medical facilities that use digital medical imaging.

With new HIPPA regulations in place regarding patient privacy, hospitals must take care in how they store patient information. With a Candelis pacs system at work, a medical facility can store digital medical images and digital records saved in the dicom format to offsite locations in a DICOM archive for disaster recovery and backup, and this helps these organizations to stay in compliance with HIPPA rules.

Candelis dicom systems can also add on a pacs ris software component to complement the digital technology. While the pacs allows medical centers to store, send and retrieve medical digital images, the ris software integrates many of the reporting and recordkeeping components that come with work at a medical office. Patient intake information, medical reports and orders for tests, in short text documents related to medicine, can be added with a ris system to the digital imaging of the pacs system to offer a complete tool for enhanced patient care while increasing medical office efficiency.

Medical facilities, including large hospitals and smaller medical offices, even dental and veterinary offices, now take advantage of the power and ease that comes from digital medical imaging and the technology that has developed for making it all work.

About the Author:
Adam Kellogg is a consultant in the medical imaging industry. Mr. Kellogg closely follows trends in DICOM appliance and Mini PACS.