DIGITAL XRAYS AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO CAPRIUS.....
Digital Mammography is being tested in several places. Mass General Hospital, with Dr. Dan Koppans is one of the Beta Sites for GE. Trex Medical has three Beta Sites. One with Dr. Fajardo at Univ. Of
Virginia, one at South Shore Radiologists, Good Samaritan Hospital in Long Island. All these sites are reporting improvement in diagnosis but it is not yet conclusive and the knowledge not yet diffused.
The consensus is that Digital Mammography will catch on in 4 to 5 years.
One of the problems to confront is the high cost of the equipment. $400,000 or so per system and more importantly is the tremendous educational process to manipulate and read the images. Retrain
RADIOlogy people...yuk yuk... mission impossible...good evening mr Phelps...
Trex Medical just filed their 510K submission to the FDA. They will prove equivalency, because that is probably what they will claim, meaning that by remaining filmless and using image processing and
manipulating the images, the results correlate with conventional X-Ray Film Mammography.
Also to consider Digital Mammography has to be more expensive than Conventional Mammography.
The equipment is more expensive to begin with. Technicians are of a different kind to be able to operate the Digital Mammography Station etc... X-Ray Mammography brings today very low reimbursements.
There will be a lot of resistance to pay more for Digital mammography, unless it brings increased diagnostic utility.
How is this going to affect the future of MRI of the breast,
particularly Aurora. It is a good question. I believe that MRI has its own drivers independent from Digital Mammography. We believe that no matter what Digital or not. X-Ray cannot see well through dense breasts, MRI can.
X-Ray cannot see behind scar tissue, MRI can. X-Ray still produces a large number of ambiguities that need downstream resolution.
Even if we assume that Digital Mammography will decrease that number which now reaches 15+%, you must remember that there are 25 million Mammograms done today in the US. MRI is the modality of choice with the highest sensitivity, as a suplemental technology to resolve
ambiguities. And MRI will in the future become the screening tool for high risk populations based on familial or genetic pre-disposition, where women will have to be scanned starting at age 30 and not miss a year.
So we are still charging ahead ... I see new emerging technologies... at 400,000 dollars the Aurora systems are equally competitive from the start and with hopefully cheaper contrast agents they are as or more competitive costwise and THEY ARE SAFE.
Digital xrays are mutagenic. cancer causing... not very nice... and radiologists will need retraining to figure out complex patterns
and images... while I/you can read MRI's with contrast agents and much less training... and Aurora's clinicals will be done in
the next 12..or so months..??? and is safe? What is going on here...??? and it can produce digital and or RGTV signals...Just
buy Aurora's and stop it with the xrays... I mean what is the cost/benefit of digital death rays? many martini lunches with the
big xray industrial complex I guess..
luis |
