• buy 
• sell $
• about
• My DOTmed 

Three Palm Software has announced the new release, version 1.4, of its mammography reading software, WorkstationOne™. This new release will be shown at RSNA 2009, in the company's booth, # 1506. The new release adds new capabilities to the best-in-breed mammography viewer. The company specializes in this technology, which distinguishes them from generalized PACS companies.

"There are dedicated workstations like ours that specialize in mammography and then there are the PACS vendors that have viewers for all modalities with some support for mammography," said Patrick Heffernan, CTO of the Los Gatos, California Company. "In screening mammography, the need is for high efficiency -- typically a radiologist may read between 30 and 50 cases per hour-- and this is where a dedicated workstation excels."

A generic PACS viewer might work for a low volume site, he noted, but for sites with high volume, or those interested in the highest efficiency and accuracy, the workflow and tools in WorkstationOne are essential.

"Some PACS companies have a limited solution for Mammography, but even in those cases, there is a need for a dedicated mammography workstation," Heffernan added. An example of a company which is strong in PACS, but offers a dedicated workstation, is NovaRad, whose recently introduced "NovaMG" option to their PACS is based on Three Palm Software's WorkstationOne technology.

Three Palm Software's workstation technology can be installed on an off-the-shelf PC and supports the leading display systems.

"We have a number of things to enable radiologists to both quickly read the case and, we believe, do it more accurately," Heffernan told DOTmed News.

Specifically, he explained that WorkstationOne software supports the systematic viewing approach that is based on the expert viewing methodology and that was originally developed for viewing films. The idea of systematic viewing is to use a number of "masks" to enhance perception of subtle radiographic abnormalities. By use of these masks, special attention can be given to asymmetric densities in regions with a high probability of malignant lesions.

"There is a school of thought that says that systematic masking is a valuable technique. We are the only vendor that provides this masking feature; with appropriate use of this technique the radiologist can be more thorough," Heffernan said.

Another enhanced tool is "all-pixel" viewing, a way of looking at the high resolution images independent of the monitor resolution and source image resolution. This technique provides the ability to view all of the actual pixels in the images with optimal reading speed, as distinguished from quadrant views.

Integration of imaging and reporting will become the standard approach in reading screening mammography images, Heffernan predicted. WorkstationOne supports this capability now, and this enables the radiologist to be even more efficient.
"It's not a system built by engineers in isolation; we are clinically focused with a very strong medical advisory board that is led by world renowned radiologist, Dr. Tabar. It is easier for a small company like us to incorporate clinical feedback quickly, and bring new ideas to the market before the large players," he said.

Features of the New Release
The 1.4 release of WorkstationOne adds the following capabilities:
-Bi-directional reporting systems integration, with automatic population of the report (requires a companion system, such as that from MRS).
-Ability to display enhanced Mammography CAD reports, including dynamic operating points and detailed CAD processing information.
-Expanded suite of plug-in packages, including visualization for MR, CT and NM; breast ultrasound CAD (with Medipattern); breast MRI CAD (with iCAD); breast MRI analysis and interventional guidance (with Sentinelle); web-based document viewing; and dictation system integration.
-Integrated support for display of mammography tomosynthesis images, and associated mammography CAD reports.
-High-speed 10bit grey-scale image display with new graphics cards from NVIDIA and Matrox.
-Multi-reader/multi-machine peer-to-peer work-list synchronization.

The company is also showing a work in progress version of WorkstationOne in the "Reading Room of the Future" area, highlighting "Communicative CAD".

These new capabilities build on the existing WorkstationOne - which was already a full-featured breast imaging workstation, with an emphasis on efficient reviewing workflow and expert viewing methodologies such as Tabar's systematic viewing masks. WorkstationOne supports IHE mammography image profile and the display of CAD markers as well as GSPS graphic annotation. WorkstationOne is a software product that can be installed on an off-the-shelf general purpose computer with one or two gray-scale high resolution monitors and one color monitor.

About Three Palm Software
Three Palm Software was founded in 2007 to develop software applications for the breast imaging market. MammoOne™, a line of leading-edge software products for mammography, is designed to aid in the early and accurate diagnosis of disease impacting the health and well-being of women.