TU‐B‐I‐618‐02: Converting the Radiology Department From Film‐Screen to Digital — Making the Transition

In recent years, Picture Archiving and Communications Systems have begun to proliferate in the medical community. This is a result of technical advances that have occurred in two areas — advances in computer technology (such as storage density, processing speeds, network bandwidth, compression techniques, and so on), and the maturation of robust standards for communication and transmission of medical images and information (Standards like HL‐7, DICOM, and IHE). In parallel with these developments, the medical imaging equipment and information systems vendors have been developing robust software implementations and more advanced system architecture to take advantage of this emerging technology and these robust standards. As a result of this revolutionary change in the way we operate, it has become increasingly important that we in the Medical Physics community modify our approach to the type of support we bring to these operations accordingly. This presentation will focus on some of the issues the Medical Physicist is likely to face when supporting a clinical operation that is undergoing (or is about to undergo) a conversion from film‐screen base radiography to digitally acquired images. It will cover the educational needs of the Medical Physicist, radiologists and technical staff, how to use photostimulable phosphor imaging to introduce a radiology department to digital imaging, the importance of Modality Work List Management in the filmless radiology environment, selection of a DDR system for clinical use, weaning the referring clinicians off of film and what issues are important to achieving this, quality control programs for digital imaging systems, and finally those features of the radiology reading room environment that are important for soft‐copy interpretation.