Teleradiology

Teleradiology refers to the transmission of radiographic images from one location to another. Most of the work to date has involved scanning of conventional radiographs at clinics and other medical facilities with no full-time radiologist and transmitting the images to a medical center or hospital, where they are viewed on a television monitor and interpreted by a diagnostic radiologist. In this article, the author describes the 1982 and 1984 Teleradiology Field Trials, the objectives of which were (1) to compare the quality of film and video images in the field, which involved determination of sensitivity, specificity, and overall accuracy under both sets of viewing conditions; (2) to evaluate the reliability, maintenance, and communication functions of the teleradiology system; (3) to determine the costs involved in developing such a system and for day-to-day operation; and (4) to formulate recommendations for hardware, software, communication protocols, operating procedures, staff qualifications, and training requirements for future systems. Today, commercially available systems include high-speed digitization of radiographs, data compression, local storage, automatic transmission, selective retrieval, image enhancement, and interfacing with conventional computer systems.