As reported in the December 2004 issue of RSNA News, many radiologists are now using their iPods to store their images. Considering the large disk space of the iPods, currently 20-60 gigs, and the speed of the firewire interface, many are finding this an invaluable and inventive tool.

"This is what we call using off the shelf, consumer market technology," says Osman Ratib, M.D., Ph.D., professor and vice-chairman of radiologic services at UCLA. "Technology coming from the consumer market is changing the way we do things in the radiology department."

"Radiologists deal with a very large amount of medical imaging data," Dr. Ratib explains. "I never have enough space on my disk, no matter how big my disk is--I always need more space. One day I realized, I have an iPod that has 40 gigabytes of storage on it. It's twice as big as my disk on my laptop and I'm using only 10 percent of it for my music. So, why don't I use it as a hard disk for storing medical images?"
Combined with the Open Source, free software OsiriX, the new generation of Apple computers and iPods are changing the face of radiologic imaging. OsiriX is a DICOM viewer for Mac OSX, but it also allows users to upload images to the internet and use instant messaging to communicate.

"For us, it's a way of doing very cheap, very convenient teleradiology," Dr. Ratib explains. "I could be chatting with one of my buddies and he can see my screen, so I can show him what I'm doing with an image."

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