Innovative Wireless X-Ray System Increases Productivity and Lessens Exam Times

An Austrian hospital is upgrading its facilities with state-of-the-art wireless X-ray technology.

Rudolfstiftung Hospital (Vienna, Austria), one of five main hospitals of the Vienna Hospital Association, has installed a second Carestream Health (Rochester, NY, USA) DRX-1 system following a successful trial during the summer of 2009.

The trial was initiated as a result of the hospital upgrading its facilities across three X-ray rooms in a move to meet the required high demand for images, both in terms of capacity and quality. Installation of the new mobile DRX-1 detector offered the opportunity to improve workflow while maintaining quality, as it was compatible with the existing equipment.

According to institute director, Prof. Dr. Tscholakoff, "We wanted to improve the workflow with our decision to use the DRX-1 mobile detector, and we succeeded. We were able to increase productivity and shorten examination times of radiology patients, to the benefit of both patients and staff. We are very happy with the picture quality. It is definitely better than the old imaging plate system.”

The room in which the hospital is introducing the DRX-1 system is primarily used to take images of the abdomen and urinary tract, images for the urological stone center, general nonsurgical and surgical images, in addition to lung bed and skeletal images.

Dr. L. Deimer, a senior physician in Prof. Dr. Tscholakoff's team added, "As well as the improvement in quality, we have the advantage of a decrease in time from the previous two minutes to 17 seconds, which, above all, benefits our X-ray patients from the IC [intensive care] ward. Furthermore, we have seen that our staff workload has been reduced from the previous 50 steps to 30 steps per X-ray image, which makes the work significantly easier.”

The innovative DRX-1 system, developed by Carestream Health, Inc. and introduced in 2008, expands radiology opportunities for practices and clinics. The battery-operated detection system is compatible with traditional X-ray machines working with ISO 4090 cassettes, and can be easily inserted into tabletop or wall-mounted detection units. Digitized X-ray images are transferred from detector to console via a wireless local area network (LAN) connection immediately after exposure and in contrast to imaging plates, the cassette readout on the reader is no longer necessary because the picture is available immediately.

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