The Frost & Sullivan research service titled Diagnostic Digital Imaging concentrates on the front-end digital capture part of imaging - in other words, the detector technology. This research service is an update on a Frost & Sullivan initiated research service done in the past titled Advances in X-ray technologies. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine computed and digital radiography technologies.
Technology Overview
High Throughput Driving Adoption
The migration of radiography toward a film-free digital environment is in full swing, with both computed radiography (CR) and digital radiography (DR) making significant inroads over the years. One of the key factors driving their increased adoption is their ability to deliver higher throughput, thereby allowing hospitals to increase revenues imaging more patients in a single room. The high resolution of images obtained from these systems and the low radiation exposure risk for patients are additional drivers for the technology, and what is more, the recent decline in prices of systems has been creating greater interest among imaging facilities of all sizes.
Although the productivity gains and long-term value of both CR and DR are well defined, the benefits take a nosedive if medical facilities lack the basic infrastructure and electronic management systems for storing and retrieving patient demographics and related information. "This is particularly evident in many underdeveloped countries where the primary means of obtaining radiography is through the use of the conventional screen film methodology," notes the analyst of this research service. "In addressing this restraint, manufacturers of CR and DR equipment should encourage the installation of picture archiving system (PACS) or some other form of electronic management system to promote electronic exchange of data, which could prove cost consuming."
New Storage-based Phosphors and Scanning Systems under Development
With regard to technology trends, new storage-based phosphors and scanning systems are being experimented for use in CR. The crystals are grown in the shape of a needle and coated on a glass or aluminum substrate without the need for a binding material between them. This makes the phosphors more structured, enables tighter phosphor packing, and causes a significant reduction in the pixel size area, resulting in detective quantum efficiency (DQE) value that is as high as indirect conversion flat panel detector systems. The advantage of such a system is that the image is scanned line by line, thereby resulting in shorter scanning time. These scanners could, in essence, read out every single pixel in a line for a significantly longer duration. The technique has also indicated lower levels of exposure, at least by about 50 percent compared to the unstructured system.
This apart, there have been considerable advances in the development of portable devices flat panel detector systems. One promising area of application is the use of these dynamic flat panel systems in fluoroscopy. Studies that have employed these systems have shown that there is an improvement in the quality of the image obtained along with a reduction in the patient exposure level. "Improvement in both DQE and signal to noise ratio of detectors by manufacturers will help further reduction of the exposure level and offer improvements in the quality of the image," says the analyst. "Manufacturers have gone one step further in designing a new architecture of the read out arrays that could be optimized by reducing the size of the circuit and pixels."
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