International Market

Classic Diagnostic Imaging is seeing a great deal of interest from the overseas market, especially when it comes to parts.


"Absolutely, it's a big emerging market," Van Almen says. "Brazil, South America, Japan also...the parts market is strong. I probably get three or four requests a week for quotes for overseas.."

Refurbished and used equipment are also selling well.

"Sales throughout Europe and Latin America are doing very well; though the economy has kept many of our clients from transitioning into digital. We are slowly starting to see the market shift but for many of our customers; the price of digital is still not an option," says Lowe. "We are starting to see changes in both Latin America and Europe as the prices of the early GE 2000D units become more affordable."

Looking Ahead

The biggest buzz in the mammography industry these days concerns the advent of 3D technology, called tomosynthesis, which is currently in testing trials and is awaiting approval by the FDA.

Digital tomosynthesis for mammography has shown promise to overcome the limitations of projection mammography. The main limitation of both film and digital mammography is the fact that the 3D anatomical information is projected into a 2D image plane. Therefore, anatomical structures that overlap the tumors limit the radiologist's ability to detect certain cancers. With breast tomosynthesis, several views of the breast are acquired from different viewing angles and slice images are reconstructed into a 3D volume set.

Hologic already is marketing their 3D product in Europe and getting a good response.

"The major benefit you get from 3D is you can look at a breast in multiple slices," says Hall. "You're looking at a 3D image of a 2D object by adding depth resolution. If you don't have a way to look through layers, you can miss a cancer. You can see tissue that looks suspicious but it's innocent. Tomosynthesis takes a series of exposures at different angles and a reconstruction algorithm is applied and you can look at 1 mm slices."

When it comes to 3D imaging on digital mammography, Radtke believes its usage will depend on reimbursement status, but suggests that Siemens' next digital mammography platform is being designed to evolve with future clinical applications, such as the 3D imaging.

"The focus is on providing our customers with a system that will protect their investment by being able to add new clinical applications to the system when they become available in the market without major downtime.," Radtke says. "Siemens continues to focus on support services, such as clinical connectivity support to ensure smooth integration into our customers' PACS networks, as well as hospital marketing needs to support efforts to reach out to our customers' community to market new technology and clinical procedures, such as digital mammography and biopsy services."

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