"You could have a patient who needs to show an image to a referral doctor or who could be from out-of-town and needs the film to bring back," says Ruth.

Plus, not everyone is fascinated with the whole digital craze and some doctors and radiologists-especially individuals who have been around the industry longer-still want to view film.


"If you have an MRI center and one of your referring physicians only wants to look at film, you're not going to want to stop taking his business so you better have film for him," says Thompson. "A lot of that still comes into play because so many of the CDs that they give to physicians have different nuances of each viewer and a lot of the older doctors don't have the patience for that and want film."

Refurbish market declining

Even though the OEMs are said to be aggressive in selling their new equipment, there is still somewhat of a demand for the refurbished laser cameras.

"A refurbished non mammography laser camera you can get for $10,000 or less while a refurbished mammography laser camera runs $12,000 to $18,000," says Denholtz. "New ones run anywhere from $30,000 to $45,000, so it's still a great savings."

Yet the market for refurbished laser cameras has remained relatively flat as PACS and other related digital solutions have become increasingly easy to obtain due to the overall lower cost and scalability of these systems.

"PACS caters to every type of facility now ranging from the smallest clinics to the largest hospitals, and the idea that a facility can become filmless or close-to-filmless for less than what it costs to purchase film and maintain their dry imagers and/or wet processors on a monthly basis is very attractive to most facilities," says Moretti.

This is a trend many have witnessed to increase rapidly over the last several years. However, although digital solutions are on the rise in the medical marketplace, most companies believe there will still be the need for film printing, but on a much smaller scale.

"When refurbishing a laser camera it is critical to install all the latest hardware and software upgrades that the OEM has come out with," Moretti says. "Also, all wearing parts as well as parts which affect the image quality such as image drums, print heads, decurl, etc. need to be replaced. Many units are also too old and have an excessively high print count to qualify for refurbishing. We have a very strict QA policy for refurbishing, with which only about 25% of all imagers qualify for refurbishing."

Generally a refurbished process involves replacing rollers, drum assemblies, worn parts, and adding additional accessories to make the system completely functional.

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