The Drive for Efficiency in Imaging
While efficiency has always been important in health care, the changes we see in today’s environment are requiring the medical community to be even more diligent. Many are starting to recognize that the right equipment can make important differences. At this year’s RSNA, Toshiba showcased how its systems are helping health care professionals meet the demands for efficiency without sacrificing quality.
Magnetic Resonance
The patient-focused features of the Vantage Titan™ improve exam efficiency and accuracy while mitigating issues around imaging claustrophobic and bariatric patients. The Vantage Titan features a large 71-cm aperture open bore and offers the industry’s largest clinical field-of-view (55×55×50 cm). The bore’s diameter enables technologists to scan patients with greater ease and reduces the feeling of claustrophobia. Toshiba’s patented Pianissimo™ technology, which reduces acoustic noise by as much as 90 percent, is also increasing the comfort level of patients during exams. Improving comfort level is critical because it often reduces the need for re-scans, thus improving efficiency.
St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor, Wash., has experienced these benefits first hand. “The Toshiba Titan has been the workhorse MR system for us and is able to accommodate the wide variety of MR exams we perform each day,” said Gary Leslie, MRI technologist at St. Anthony. “We are imaging multiple patients a day and have received direct patient feedback that the system is quieter and feels less claustrophobic than other MR systems. This has helped us to greatly improve exam efficiency and department throughput.”
Additionally, the system’s Atlas integrated coils allow physicians to perform multiple exams without repositioning the patient and also enable feet-first imaging for feet-to-shoulder exams. This means a more comfortable exam experience and results in enhanced workflow and technologist productivity. Also, Toshiba’s SPEEDER parallel imaging allows for increased acquisition speed and reduced examination times.
X-ray
Today’s emergency departments are challenged to provide rapid, accurate diagnoses for a variety of patient conditions when time is of the essence. Toshiba’s RADREX™-i digital radiographic system is designed to provide the features emergency departments require to offer the highest level of patient care.
The comprehensive RADREX-i offers a 600-lb. table weight limit, 600 kHU X-ray tube and an 80-kilowatt generator, allowing hospitals to image a variety of patients, including bariatric. The X-ray system enhances workflow with the RexView, a color LCD screen located on the overhead tube crane (OTC). Since the image appears on the OTC, technologists have immediate access to review the image and determine if they have what is needed for diagnosis, ultimately reducing exam time and increasing the chance of a positive patient outcome.
The RADREX-i’s automated features also save time in emergency settings by automating exam selection and X-ray positioning. These features include:
- Auto-tracking to eliminate the need to manually position the X-ray tube detector by providing synchronization for table and wall-stand tracking
- Auto-collimation to save crucial time for the patient and technologist by automatically selecting the correct collimation size for the patient’s body part
- Auto-program to eliminate the need for the technologist to manually select the program on the generator by automatically selecting the correct program
- Auto-center stop to provide visual guidance for fast, simple detector centering
St. Luke’s Community Hospital in Ronan, Mont. uses the RADREX-i in its emergency department.
“When treating emergency patients, acting quickly is critical,” said Steve Sivak, radiology manager, St. Luke Community Hospital. “The advanced features of the RADREX-i help us streamline workflow and accelerate throughput, providing a tremendous benefit to patients when time is limited.”
Ultrasound
Many hand-carried ultrasound systems offer better access to patients when space is compromised, but cannot provide all of the advanced radiology capabilities required to perform exams in today’s demanding ultrasound environment. Toshiba’s new works-in-progress Viamo™ ultrasound system meets the needs of today’s hospitals by combining portability with high-end radiology features. Viamo is the industry’s no compromise ultrasound system with advanced radiology capabilities, previously unavailable on hand carried systems.
The Viamo combines the portability of a laptop system with advanced radiology features to deliver outstanding image quality, enhance diagnostic confidence and improve ease-of-use. Developed from a radiology foundation, Toshiba’s Viamo provides the confidence to image patients at bedside, which generally require larger, more expensive cart-based systems. When an immobile patient needs a high-end ultrasound exam, the portable Viamo laptop ultrasound is brought to the patient to improve the patient’s comfort without compromising exam quality.
The new Toshiba Viamo laptop ultrasound system offers:
- Best-in-class imaging capabilities in a laptop size, making it ideal for high-end radiology, vascular, emergency and OB/GYN exams, even at bedside. For example, Viamo is beneficial during liver transplants when medical personnel must image the anastomoses to assess blood flow through the vessels.
- Excellent image quality and color flow comparable to larger, more expensive cart-based systems.
- Ease-of-use with a simple touch-screen interface that is programmable in panel or tablet modes.
- Ability to interchange Toshiba transducers while using the Viamo’s transportation pole, thus improving productivity and flexibility, while saving health care costs by reducing the need to purchase multiple transducers. This unique feature improves productivity and saves money for current customers by using their existing Toshiba transducers on the Viamo. Additionally, new customers are able to use Viamo transducers with other Toshiba ultrasound systems they may purchase in the future.
Computed Tomography
Overall, Toshiba’s Aquilion® line continues to be focused on exam efficiency and the company has added several new features to help the medical community. The Aquilion line comes with a host of SURETechnologies that automate parts of the exam, which not only provides efficiencies, but also safer exams. For example, Variable Helical Pitch (vHP) ensures greater workflow efficiency by enabling physicians to complete an exam of more than one anatomical region consecutively – i.e. without stopping to alter the helical pitch of the exam. Toshiba’s CT line also features items like the iStation, a screen on the gantry that provides automatic exam feedback to the technologist, and a table with a 660-lb. weight limit that also lowers within inches of the ground, enabling patients to sit on the table more easily.
While the entire Aquilion line boasts efficiencies, Toshiba’s Aquilion® ONE is designed for today’s health care environment because it can streamline workflow by providing a more accurate, complete and timely diagnosis with one exam. The Aquilion ONE can image a patient in 0.35 seconds, whereas conventional helical CTs can take four or five seconds, approximately 10 to 12 times slower. Beyond its fast acquisition time, the Aquilion ONE can replace several tests with one exam, eliminating the time, cost and staff required to perform additional unnecessary exams. It also allows physicians to treat at-risk patients immediately and send healthy patients home without additional testing and staff support.
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Tags: bariatric, Medical Imaging, MRI, RSNA, Ultrasound
Category: Medical Equipment,Medical Imaging —