Writing for the Web

Published on-line by MyCityRadio, March/001

-ray imaging in 3D efficient and safe

With the unveiling today of a state of the art $3.8 million diagnostic system at Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre (VHHSC), doctors at BC’s largest hospital and the UBC Hospital will be able to literally ‘look inside’ their patients before they operate. Instead of searching for tumours and fractures on flat, old-fashioned X-ray images, doctors will able to rotate, magnify and view the problem on flat, digital screens showing four different views of the same image simultaneously. This is the first system of its kind in Western Canada, and the first to transmit digital x-ray data between two hospital sites.

Dr. Nestor Muller, Head, Department of Radiology, VHHSC, said the advanced digital system has benefits for patients, doctors and X-ray technicians because it allows the images to be transmitted digitally to all operating rooms or wherever they are needed in the hospital. "With standard film-based x-rays, there is only one copy, and if you want to obtain a consulting opinion, you have to either bring the doctor to the x-ray or the x-ray to the doctor. This inevitably leads to delays, especially with complex abnormalities requiring assessment by several specialists. For example, a radiologist would have to scrub up and go into an operating room in order to consult with surgeons looking at an x-ray during an operation," he said. Dave Purdie, section head of Angiography at VHHSC said: "It will be great to work with this new system. No more surgeons screaming for their x-rays, no delays, and no health concerns for the technicians, either."

The system still in use today in most hospital is based on 50 year old technology which hasn’t changed much since its invention. Storage and retrieval of the more than 1million images is just one problem. The system is also dangerous to the health of x-ray technicians. UBC Hospital was forced to move its brand-new x-ray developing machine to another building because workers handling the film were exposed to glutaraldahyde, an extremely toxic chemical used in the developing process and which, according to studies conducted by WCB, is not safe at any level of exposure. 6 workers at UBC developed chronic illnesses as a result of this exposure. With this new digital technology, this problem has essentially been solved.

The system operates on fibre-optic cables. The change-over from the old to the new system is expected to take about three months, but the fibre-optic cables won’t all be laid until the end of the year, according to William Walls, VP Finance of 360 Networks, the company building the fibre-optic network. Along with Ledcor, one of Vancouver’s established construction companies, 360 Networks are donating the funds to pay for this project. Asked what drove his company to be so generous, Walls said that his company is just stepping in Ledcor’s footsteps, who have led the way in ‘giving back to the community’, as he put it. Pressed, he admitted that it might also be good publicity for his publicly traded company. Concerns over patient confidentiality have been addressed by the use of access codes, which are only available to the people actually working on the system. This is much more secure than having a room full of x-ray images, said Dr. Muller.