![]() ![]() As a result, budget-strapped hospitals and clinics may be forced to care for patients without the advantage of advanced radiological imaging tools.Īnd this triggers another, more serious, cost: without proper resources, radiology teams may face a disrupted workflow that could keep them from quickly and efficiently delivering lifesaving diagnoses and treatment. Yet most 2D/3D Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) workstations cost as much as $40,000–$60,000, with the bulk of costs driven by software licences. High costs Leading vendors of medical imaging tools offer workstation solutions that target those needs. ![]() Because few doctors are experts in image processing, networking and 2D/3D algorithms, all these features should be accessible via an intuitive user interface. For an imaging workstation to achieve optimal productivity, it must, for example, be able to fuse data gathered from different modalities and/or apply special analytic algorithms that allow radiologists to visualise only the relevant diagnostic information. However, processing large data volumes is not the only challenge for today’s workstations. While more – and better – imaging data brings obvious benefits, it also has triggered the need for powerful viewing and postprocessing workstations that allow fast and multidimensional access to high-resolution volumetric data sets. New scanning and measurement devices capture up to 1,000 times more data than in previous generations. Managing growth in imaging data Imaging data is seeing rapid growth in both volume and complexity. In addition, four PACS department servers, each from a different solution vendor, support data buffering and image distribution. Eighty image visualisation and postprocessing workstations handle the 40 TB of image data stored by a central picture archiving and communication system (PACS). Radiology staff rely on approximately 150 radiology information system (RIS) workstations to access patient data to plan and report examinations. The Department of Clinical Radiology oversees most of the hospital’s radiological practice, from conventional radiology, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), pediatric radiology and interventional radiology to nuclear medicine and neuroradiology. Approximately 4,500 employees care for nearly 300,000 in- and outpatients each year. The hospital has 18 clinical departments (including surgery, internal medicine, ophthalmology and gynaecology) and 12 departments for diagnostics and research. The University Hospital of Mannheim is a medical faculty affiliated to the University of Heidelberg in southwest Germany. Gerald Weisser MD PhD Assistant Professor of Radiology Department of Clinical Radiology University Hospital of Mannheim, Germany
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