Understanding Medical Imaging Software
Medical imaging is used in a clinical setting to diagnose and treat illness and disease. Medical imaging software converts the images captured by imaging processes like computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray. When software is in place, doctors can analyze X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for diagnosis and treatment of patients through the use of PDFs and on screen computer images.
How Does Medical Imaging Software Improve Medical Diagnosis and Treatment?
On a basic level, medical imaging typically refers to radiology. Machines are used to “take pictures” of the human body and those images are used for diagnosis and treatment. In order to gain a better look inside the body, dyes or radioactive fluids are injected into the bloodstream in some cases. These produce a specific look during image acquisition. Image acquisition is where medical imaging software comes into play. The machine can create an image, but medical imaging software is needed to acquire the image and transform it into a picture doctors can use for diagnosis and treatment.
New nanotechnology is advancing the ability of medical imaging software. Nanoparticles can be used to treat cancer patients and improve medical imaging. Chemotherapy agents laced with nanoparticles trained to seek out and destroy cancer cells are injected into the bloodstream. The targeting medication surrounds the cancer and using medical imaging software, doctors are able to see the size of the affected area with an MRI.
Some forms of imaging require a two stage process. The initial results are commonly seen on a computer screen from a control room, as is the case with an MRI scan. Though the scan can provide immediate results, the final image is often saved as a PDF. Individual layers of the scan can be accessed or viewed as a combined picture with multiple scans stacked on top of one another.
The more advanced of medical imaging software technologies have created different solutions for various specialties in the healthcare niche. For instance, cardiology departments now have access to imaging studies of perfusion defects or imaging results of myocardial viability obtained through diagnostic imaging studies like PET and SPECT. Today, cardiology specialists can order 3D or 4D cardiac images that can be easily aligned and seen in the ASNC format by using easily-available medical imaging software.
These displays provide the option of multi-modality editing so that images with different voxel sizes can be better viewed. Many of these software applications can create subtraction images from aligned images. This allows for easily highlighting the perfusion differences or metabolism mismatches in the imaging studies that forms the basis of cardiology diagnosis. In fact, PET and SPECT imaging studies can be fused with CTCA imaging to provide detailed anatomical or functional analysis.
The same advances have also been seen in the niche of Neurology PET and SPECT Quantitative Analysis. Here, Radiology or Nuclear Medicine personnel can demand diagnostic images where PET and SPECT neuro-imaging are more detailed. This helps to easily decode the changes in neurological metabolic activities that point towards neurological disorders. These imaging softwares also help to facilitate imaging comparisons using a large database of age-appropriate, normal images that are stored for different specialties.
