Mammography PACS to Improve Breast Screening Service in UK

A mammography picture archiving and communications system (PACS) is being implemented in hospitals to improved breast screening in the United Kingdom.

Carestream Health (Rochester, NY, USA) has been awarded the contract to supply Carestream PACS, with high-resolution diagnostic mammography workstations and integrated radiology information systems (RIS), to the Dorset Breast Screening Unit, as part of the expanding UK National Health Service (NHS) Breast Screening program.

The five Carestream PACS mammography workstations will be based at Poole Hospital in Dorset (UK), on the south coast of England, and produce high quality digital breast images that can be manipulated and enhanced for the radiologist to interpret in a manner that is not possible with film-based traditional mammograms. The Dorset Breast Screening Unit, staffed by a team of mammography professionals, is responsible for providing mammographic service for over 96,000 women across the county of Dorset. Screening is chiefly carried out on three mobile units, each of which will have its own image retrieval system.

Chris Woodgate, radiology manager at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said, "We are delighted that the move to digital is going ahead. We believe that Dorset women will be amongst the first in the country to benefit from a fully digital breast screening service.'

The Carestream PACS has an architecture that will provide the best technical solution to support the unique workflow of the breast-screening program. It will also help the Dorset Service with its planned age expansion program, as Ms. Woodgate explained, "Our current breast screening program routinely covers Dorset women aged between 50 and 70. The move to full digital screening will allow us to expand to those aged between 47 and 73 years, increasing our workload by 28%. The Carestream PACS system is so easy to use, which makes it more efficient. This will reduce our film reading times and help with the increased workload. For instance,” she continued, "our film readers currently view images on roller viewers and have to move from viewer to viewer to film read screening clinics. The new image viewers will reduce the time they spend moving around. And the new Carestream PACS system will also create a much cleaner and pleasanter working environment. We can't wait to start using it.”

Early detection of potential problems typically means less radical treatment and better long-term outcomes. The sooner a tumor can be detected, the more likely it is to be treatable. Full-field digital mammography is particularly suited to examining the dense breast tissue normally found in women less than 50 years of age.

Ms. Woodgate believes the PACS will reduce film reading times from a current five days to two or three days. "If we can see images earlier then we can report earlier, which will speed up the whole process. And that will mean we can improve our waiting times for call back appointments.”

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