This article is from in the July 2007 issue of DOTmed Business News. A list of registered users that provide sales & service can be found at the end.

Wet processing of film-the mainstay of X-ray, CT, and other radiological technology for the last 30 years-is about to go the way of Betamax, buggy whips, and the dinosaurs. Leading experts in the field give film another five years, max. When it's finally gone it will mark the end of a fertile line in the evolution of diagnostic imaging.

"The first Matrix cameras were the size of a refrigerator," remembers Bill Blackford, Vice President of CTronics, in Stockton, California. Blackford explains the history of film processing cameras with the affection usually accorded a '57 Chevy. "These cameras used light to expose x-ray film then the x-ray film was developed chemically like regular film-all of it inside the machine. It was like a little Photomat" And about the same size, too.
By the 1990s 3M was able to do away with "wet" processing altogether, with its new dry view cameras that developed film without wet chemicals. But it was still film. Even the new thermal imaging and laser cameras relied on film. It didn't matter much that film was analog; proprietary networks and incompatible protocols made sharing digital data impossible anyway.




Then came DICOM. Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine changed everything. In the mid-1990s the medical imaging industry established worldwide protocols for the storage and transfer of medical digital imagery. For the first time images could seamlessly navigate networks. Film was toast.

"Nobody buys wet anymore," says Peter Chen, President, Global Medical Equipment, a Pennsylvania company that buys and sells imaging equipment. "I'd say, right now 80% of the market is dry laser. 30% is still wet-film. No-one's replacing wet machines. Soon film will be gone."

Should we be sorry? Will we regret the loss of film in imaging the way audiophiles rue the demise of vinyl? "A lot of doctors say they prefer film, a hard copy they can hang on a view board," says Blackford whose company sells and refurbishes imaging equipment. "Most of them just don't know how to use computers." DICOM notwithstanding, Blackford isn't all that optimistic about healthcare's readiness for an all-digital no-film world. "You have all this high-tech digital technology and none of the networks in the hospitals have what it takes to support it. It might be a good idea to get the IT situation together before we get rid of film entirely."

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