Medical imaging is essential for physicians to make an informed diagnosis. X-Ray, MRI, CT, PET Scan, etc. are some of the medical imaging modalities. After the DICOM standard was introduced, medical imaging equipment vendors are required to maintain a high-standard while producing them. Just like the hardware has changed for the better to make these high-quality medical images, so has the software. There are lots of different kinds of medical imaging software in the market right now. In this article, you will find a quick overview of the different kinds of medical imaging software that are available nowadays.
Medical Imaging Software for Analysis
This type of software is exactly what the name suggests- they analyze. They take patient’s data and analyze them to help doctors make a diagnosis. These analyzing software have come a long way and nowadays, researchers are striving to make this software be able to even detect anomalies lying in the medical images independently.
Usually, radiologists do the analyses but when the radiologists have to work with a mountain of images, their job gets very hard. This is when the analysis software comes in handy. They can quickly interpret medical images and detect anomalies. The Tel Aviv company Aidoc has manufactured analysis software that can provide diagnostic for a full-body CT scan. Arterys has made software that can help diagnose liver MRIs, lung MRIs, and mammograms.
Analyzing software have their limitations as well. The software itself can do so much, it mostly depends on the machine it is running on. If the machine works well, so can the software.
Medical Imaging Software for Processing
Although some people think this type of software also does analysis, their main is to process the images that have been acquired. They do this in 3 ways- Segmentation, Registration, and Visualization.
Processing software does image segmentation by dividing images into different segments, the segments have to mean something i.e. they must represent a different organ or a structure. Image registration is a procedure to align the images to the correct order. Visualization is done to see the images from different perspectives. This helps doctors to view the images with greater depth and clarity.
Medical Imaging Software for Management
The World is overpopulated so the number of patients is also huge. To handle this many patients’ diagnostic medical images are too enormous for us. This is when this management software is useful to us.
They can organize and integrate the huge amount of data with ease and they consist of a PACS server that can be integrated with a regular DICOM workstation. This software can store, archive and allows integration of medical image data with patient data in other workstations. This makes it convenient for doctors to access the data from anywhere they want and in good order.
Conclusion
The 3D medical imaging software does more than just view DICOM medical images. They help doctors in a lot of ways. We expect them to help us even more in the future.
