Though it has divested its lower-end digitizer business, Canon continues to manufacture the Canon 300++, a customized, 50-micron CCD digitizer. Canons change of direction is really more a portent of a bigger future – one that looks to a market far less saturated with solutions, a market that may revolutionize healthcare the way digitization did a while back.
#Icad digitizer plus
Teleradiology use is increasing rapidly, plus theres still tons of film to be digitized and, apparently, there will be for a long time. Is Canons abandonment evidence of an aging market? Many facilities use both.Īnd that was pretty much the way things stood until Canon announced in February that it was discontinuing its PACS digitizer and leaving the market primarily to Kodak, Array, Howtek, Vidar and RDI. Each technology has its strengths, as well as its fans. Laser has emerged the faster of the two, CCD the least costly. After an awkward period of catch-up, CCD vendors now claim it offers comparable image quality to laser. Whereas laser is now a mature, refined technology whose most recent improvements concern speed and user interface, CCD has been tweaked for better pictures since its introduction. CCDs use fluorescent bulbs to shine through the film, with CCD arrays used as detectors.ĬCD was the later entry of the two. (Herndon, Va., a division of Contex Holding AS in Denmark), and Radiographic Digital Imaging Inc. in Tampa, Fla.), Canon USA Medical (Irvine, Calif.), Vidar Systems Corp. The other kind is CCD, or charge-coupled device digitizer, like those made by Howtek Devices Group (Hudson, N.H., a division of iCAD, Inc. They work with a laser that illuminates the film and a photomultiplier used as the detector. There are the laser models, such as those made by Kodak Health Imaging (Rochester, N.Y.) and Array Corp. Until last year there were two basic types of technologies available for digitizing films, and everyone was familiar with them. In todays managed-care environment, healthcare organizations continue to look for ways to contain costs, improve operating efficiencies, and increase patient satisfaction. Going filmless, say Frost and Sullivan analysts, is perceived as the best way to do the job. Business research firm Frost and Sullivan (San Jose, Calif.) states that General radiography is the largest cost contributor and one of the most inefficient applications for radiology departments. Here are two more reasons why digitizers remain popular: They help drive down the cost of general radiography and improve patient satisfaction with it. And while every organization that desires to go filmless cant afford to replace its analog modalities, a digitizer may well be within financial reach. Many facilities also find them invaluable for managing films that patients bring in from elsewhere. Teleradiology and the conversion of film libraries to PACS top the list of current uses for general-purpose digitizers. The heated-up race to carve out new markets is what really makes the digitizer sector fascinating to observe.
#Icad digitizer full
So while film digitizers still play a pivotal role in advancing PACS and teleradiology, both of which are going full tilt right now, vendors realize that film itself may fall by the wayside eventually (though no time soon). Another corporate farewell, a promising new technology, and an industry-wide shift in marketing goals have kept everyone on their toes. In just the past year, the landscape has again changed dramatically. By 2000, a mere handful of players remained to battle each other for market share, competing all the while to ramp up the capabilities of the available two technologies. Then along came mergers, buy-outs and disruptive technologies such as DR that whittled down the flock. Laser technology was soon joined by CCD, and the original manufacturers were joined by newcomers. In its dawning in 1990, it comprised several companies that made laser scanners for converting analog images to digital. Images from top: Radiographic Digital Imaging, Inc.s cd digitizer, the Cobrascan 2000 SL Howteks CIS digitizer, the Fulcrum Array Corp., USAs 2905 Laser Film Digitizer Vidar Systems Corp.s DiagnosticPro Plusįor all its many upheavals, the film digitizer industry seems like its been around forever.
0 kommentar(er)
