Image is everything [Filmless digital imaging systems]

With modern scanners producing images in unprecedented detail, the amount of digital information swirling around hospitals is huge, and growing all the time. Two key technologies have been developed to knit these heterogeneous systems together PACS and DICOM. A PACS (picture archiving and communication system) is a set of computers or networks designed to store, retrieve, distribute and present medical images generated by the various modalities, and replaces traditional hard-copy images such as film archives. The images themselves are stored in an independent format, and the standard here is DlCOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine). DICOM includes a file format definition and a network communications application protocol that uses TCP/IP to communicate between systems. In imaging there are a number of reasons for the wide and growing take-up of MRI. It is perceived as inherently safe - because it relies on electromagnetic radiation rather than X-rays. This imaging leads to a lower signal-to-noise ratio and therefore poorer image resolution, so there is clearly still work to be done on bringing open MRI on a par with closed systems.