CHICAGO - Agfa HealthCare of Greenville, SC, is pointing visitors to its RSNA booth to PACS software enhancements that include support for digital mammography studies. The company is also launching a new radiography room, as well as a new version of its Musica image processing software.
IT/PACS
Agfa is giving RSNA attendees a preview into a series of works-in-progress clinical applications that will advance and bolster its Impax product line.
Agfa is demonstrating its Impax clinical applications, which are designed to expand decision support within Agfa's RIS and PACS technologies, and bring several advanced clinical applications into a single Impax desktop.
When released next year, the new features will allow radiologists and clinicians to perform complex image processing without having to use a specialized workstation. The applications will include 3D fusion, digital subtraction, angiography, computer-aided detection, x-ray vascular analysis, virtual colonoscopy, and nuclear medicine.
In support of the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) initiative and electronic health record (HER) technology, Agfa is debuting its new Impax Data Center in the U.S.
The multimedia archive supports storage for all types of images and diagnostic results for hospital groups, regional healthcare delivery networks, and national medical archives. Impax Data Center also consolidates information in a central clinical database to provide access at the point of patient care, can receive hundreds of images per second, and manage 1,000 TB of information.
Impax Data Center supports DICOM standards and incorporates IHE for all radiology, cardiology, and IT infrastructure integration profiles. While not yet available in the U.S., Impax Data Center has made its debut in Europe.
Agfa also is unveiling its new partnership with Dallas-based Vocada. Agfa plans to integrate its Impax RIS, PACS, and reporting technologies with Vocada's critical test results management (CTRM) products to create a result distribution and notification product.
Vocada's Veriphy CTRM technology automates compliance with all legal and professional standards, and confirms communication of critical test results from one clinician to another. Agfa notes that the system requires no additional hardware or software. The integrated product is currently available.
Agfa is also announcing an alliance with MedSeek of Janesville, WI, to incorporate that company's eConnect Clinical Portal with its PACS software.
Finally, Agfa announced that it is working with Ascom of Switzerland to test that company's wireless notification systems with its Impax software. If testing proves successful, Agfa could use Ascom's wireless technology to help distribute data to radiologists and physicians.
CR
On the image processing side, Musica² is the newest version of the company's Musica image processing software for CR exams. The major enhancement to the software is the ability to recognize different types of structures in an image and optimize regions of interest within the same image. For example, Musica² can process a single bone image and optimize both the bone detail and the surrounding soft tissue.
Musica² will be available in the first quarter of 2007, and will be standard on all new CR readers as part of the company's new NX operating system. It will also be offered as an upgrade for the installed base of Agfa CR users.
CR 30-X is a tabletop CR reader that was shown as a work-in-progress at the 2005 RSNA show, and began shipping in October. Agfa is touting the system's throughput, at 70-85 plates an hour, and 100-micron resolution.
The company's CR 35 and CR 85 readers are being upgraded to support CR mammography, which Agfa has been selling internationally. The readers feature a new optical light collection system and new mammography plate, and will be able to conduct CR mammography procedures when Agfa receives U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance for the technology.
Printers
On the image output side, Agfa is showing DryStar 5503, which builds on the DryStar 5500 system by adding a third tray to support mammography output.
By Brian Casey and Wayne Forrest
AuntMinnie.com staff writers
November 29, 2006
Copyright © 2006 AuntMinnie.com
