ACR - DR Systems' will be demonstrating its industry-leading approach to integrating digital mammography into its top-ranked Unity(TM) RIS/PACS, at the American College of Radiology's 33rd National Conference on Breast Cancer.

DR Systems' will be demonstrating its industry-leading approach to integrating digital mammography into its top-ranked Unity^TM RIS/PACS, at the American College of Radiology's 33rd National Conference on Breast Cancer.

The conference will be held May 8-10 in Orlando, Fla. DR Systems will be at Booth 103 in the Coquita Exhibit Hall.

Nearly 50 facilities nationwide have adopted, or are in the process of adopting, DR Systems' sophisticated integration of PACS and digital mammography. 

DR Systems avoids the problems of reading and archiving digital mammograms on a stand-alone mammography workstation, by tightly integrating digital mammograms with its PACS. This approach saves capital costs and floor space in the radiology department, and better leverages the institution's investment in its PACS. It also makes radiologists more efficient and productive.

Digital mammography is rapidly becoming the mammography technology of choice as imaging centers replace their legacy analog equipment with digital mammography machines.

However, many early adopters opted for an approach that turns out to be financially and operationally inefficient. They purchased dedicated standalone workstations on which only digital mammograms can be read.

Besides the substantial capital cost for the workstations, this approach forces radiologists to physically move between pieces of equipment - for example, reading a patient's mammogram on the workstation and then moving over to the PACS to read the patient’s breast ultrasound.

A recent recommendation by the American Cancer Society (ACS) highlights the advantages of DR Systems' approach. ACS now recommends that women at higher risk for breast cancer receive an MRI scan for comparison to their annual mammogram.

With DR Systems' mammography/PACS integration, the radiologist can compare the mammogram and MRI side-by-side on the PACS. A radiologist who reads mammograms on a dedicated workstation must switch back and forth between the workstation and the facility's PACS to perform such a task.

Another advantage of the DR System's approach is its transparency regarding related modalities and prior mammograms. A dedicated mammography workstation forces radiologists to "fly blind" with respect to studies in other modalities.

That is, when the radiologist is at the workstation, there is no indication in the workstation's on-screen or stored patient information that studies in other modalities have been performed. Thus, the radiologist may not even know that an MRI has been done on the patient and is ready for comparison.

With DR's integrated mammography, the radiologist at the PACS can select any exam in any digitized modality, including MRIs and all prior mammograms. Those exams can be immediately pulled up for comparison with the current mammogram.

Other advantages include:

Compatibility with mammography computer-aided detection (CAD). 
Complete biopsy reports, with workflow to promote radiology-pathology correlation and display of pathology images.
- Leveraging of referring physicians' Web access to all radiology exams and results.
- MQSA outcome audits for all modalities and all biopsies
- Access to tools unique to DR Systems such as Image Shuffling^TM and Pixel Tracking^TM.

Image Shuffling and Pixel Tracking are display tools that help radiologists quickly perceive changes between different images, such as current vs. prior exams or pre-contrast vs. post-contrast images.