Perhaps their greatest asset is that they can be positioned anywhere without stringing data and power cords around the patient.

"The great advantage of having cassettes is that it gives you flexibility to have any type of exam," says Maier. "That's important in a trauma area, for example, where you need to be able to put a cassette under a patient that can't be moved. It's important in an OR when you need to do a cross table lateral. When you have to shoot across the table, a traditional DR will not allow that flexibility. A CR cassette really gives you the maximum amount of flexibility for any of these types of exams."


There are others who feel there is a big benefit in utilizing CR. Florida Hospital Celebration Health recently installed a new CR system and they have been enjoying the productivity that it has brought.

"I've always believed that if you set up your systems appropriately and productively. DR is not that much more productive than CR," says Sally Grady, Director of Imaging Services for the hospital. "With this new generation of CR, I believe that holds even more true."

Teaming Up

Hospitals will always need flexibility in a radiology suite because not every shot is the same-people come in on wheelchairs or on stretchers, some can't stand, some are geriatric-and that's why a combination of CR and DR is so important.

"I would by far recommend to the majority of our customers a combination of both," Maier says. "There are really different needs that DR will address better and physical needs that a CR system will address best. No one solution will be the ideal so we recommend to our customers that the combination is the best way to go."

Philips also believes that a choice doesn't need to be made and is a big proponent of a combination system that utilizes both CR and DR technology.

"We have CR and DR and a combination where we have integrated the two modalities we call CRDR so no matter what combination of imaging fits your needs, we have an integrated solution that allows productivity to be maximized," Burkhart says. "We've found and been surprised that the combination also offers a significant advantage so the operators don't have to go from one mode to the other, it's all done on one console. It goes faster and is easier for them."

Both technologies coexist because each still has its distinct advantages, and which is best for a hospital or imaging facility depends largely on its size, workload, and infrastructure.

"When technologies first came on the scene they tried to divorce themselves from each other and differentiate and now as the markets have matured, the end user is looking for both cassette-based and cassette-less imaging," Werner says. "Nowadays the difference between CR and DR is hard to discern. If you are not intimately familiar with what's inside the cassette, you would be hard-pressed to know the difference."

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