Radiologists Start Designing their Digital Workplace: Prototyping with a Digital Image Workstation in the Radiology

Abstract

Since the first use of X-ray images in medicine the method of working with these images concerning image-formation, image-viewing and image-archiving hasn’t undergone any drastic modification. The quality of the x-ray images has been improved during these years and new technologies have been added increasing the amount of image modalities considerably. Some of these new technologies have been developed on the basis of a computing system. They have been introduced as unity to the medical department producing digital images. Now, there exists the demand for merging all existing image modalities together into one concept of a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) where medical staff can have access via image workstations. But still today most of his time the radiologist spends on the diagnose of images on the ligthbox and for his image interpretation he refers to the experiences acquired by many radiologists over the last ten decades. The gained experience in analyzing the images is closely related to the image-formation and image-carrier and thus to the image characteristics. Furthermore it has to be kept in mind that the conditions for a successful and efficient work in the radiology department is not only based on the existence of an image to be examinated but also on the comparison with reference images and images taken before. As well on the infomation obtained by consulting physicians and studying the anamnesis of the patient.