Medical Digital Image: Technologies and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

For most people, talking about the digitization of diagnosis by images may seem a little far, but the truth is that we are dealing with an important issue that affects decisively the health care of the majority of the people. Namely, in any city, without it being necessary to visit the large capitals, there are in each hospital several scanners of computed tomography, magnetic resonances, ultrasounds, telemedicine…. A multitude of new equipment has emerged in unprecedented growth, unless we go back to the time immediately after the discovery of X-rays in 1895.

Digitization of both the radiologic images and the clinical and demographic data provides an increase in the quality of health care and procedures. Digitization strategy in the health environment rests on two strength ideas: the logical integration of the image data (PACS) with the clinical and demographic data of the patient; and the transmission of data and images. The advantages of the digital format (processing, reconstruction of the images in the different planes of the space, in three dimensions and video (4D), transmission to remote places and through the network of the medical images accompanied by the pertinent information of the patients, etc), explain the primacy of the process.

As a result, what are the main surprises that will come to us from technology in the coming years?

It is impossible to know. But we may venture to point out three innovations with character, and potentially transformative. One is in the field of archiving and communications, where there will be interesting news related to storage and also to the improvement in the speed of transmission and recovery of images, as well as technologies at lower costs. The second is the increasing interconnection of all types of devices and objects through the Network. Medical reports can be written in a support (tablet, telephone...) that will not necessarily have to be located in either a hospital or other health center. A third group of innovations will be related to technologies that may improve diagnosis and treatment, either by lowering the price of medical services themselves, by helping people with disabilities, by improving the quality of life of the elderly, or by developing  algorithms for computer-aided diagnosis and quantitative extraction of imaging features from medical scans (“Radiomics”).

Prof. Miguel Souto-Bayarri
Guest Editor

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