Full-Field Digital Mammography
Planning
Many factors must be evaluated when planning for a full-field digital mammography (FFDM) in order for facilities to reap these important benefits.
- In addition to securing increased capital budget dollars to purchase digital systems, facilities must plan for storage for hard copy and digital files and address the unique workflow requirements of digital mammography in order to ease the transition to digital imaging.
- aycan, as a system integrator, will be glad to help you in designing and implementing a vendor neutral workflow that meets your current needs and prepares your institution for the future.
- A key factor often overlooked during the planning stage is the need to view patient’s prior mammography exams for comparison as part of the reading workflow.
Medical Film Digitizers
Medical film digitizers play an important role in the implementation of digital mammography by allowing digitization of prior analog films for side-by-side review of current and prior-year studies, eliminating the need for a cumbersome “dual reading” environment in which mammographers must continually switch from a digital workstation to a light box. This is cumbersome and time-consuming, creating a less-than-ideal clinical environment. Hybrid viewing also raises issues of quality of consistency partly due to incompatible optical luminance and illluminance levels.
- Film digitizers used for mammography must deliver superior image quality.
- Software also must support unique mammography requirements and, in high volume applications, software and hardware must work together to integrate sophisticated batch film feeding capabilities.
- For Mammography centers and radiology departments planning to acquire FFDM systems and film digitizers, procedure volume is a key consideration along with budget.