teleradiology
  

 
The Radiology Department started providing teleradiology services to the State of Arizona in 1997 after a pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of using digital imaging technologies to acquire, transmit, store and display radiographic images.
 
Today the department serves over 20 sites around the state, interpreting computed radiography, CT, MRI, ultrasound, mammography, and fluoroscopy cases for sites and patients who otherwise would not have access to sub-specialty radiologists. Key research studies in teleradiology have focused on user satisfaction with the teleradiology services, what factors impact the quality of images in the acquisition, transmission and display phases, and what types of cases are being sent from each referring site. Recently the Radiology Department has combined efforts with the Pathology Department to establish UltraClinics for mammography and prostate imaging patients. The goal is to reduce significantly the time required to get radiographic images interpreted so that if necessary a biopsy can be obtained and interpreted with 48 hours compared to the more traditional 4-6 weeks for radiology and pathology services. The Teleradiology Program is associated with the Arizona Telemedicine Program and utilizes the network infrastructure to provide services to communities around the state of Arizona.
 

 

Personnel

Research Grants

Research Laboratories

The Radiology Research Laboratory of the Department of Radiology 1609 N. Warren Building 211 - The Radiology Research Laboratory is located in close proximity to the University Medical Center. It opened in Feb. 1988 and contains 10,000 net assignable square feet of office and laboratory space.

a. The Psychophysics Laboratory - The facilities for psychophysical research consist of two large research laboratories with 413 square feet of floor space. These laboratories are connected to the research laboratory network and to the Internet. The rooms are designed to maintain maximum control of all extraneous variables (e.g., ambient room light) during experimental sessions. A standard radiologic viewbox is available in the psychophysics lab for viewing film images.

Key to the psychophysics lab is a Series 6000SU Eye-Tracker (Applied Science Laboratories, Bedford, MA) with a magnetic head-tracking device. This system is an advanced eye-tracker that accurately and unobtrusively measures point of gaze and gaze duration information. The 4000SU is ideal for use in a clinical radiology setting because it provides for an unlimited field of view with free head and body motion. The 4000SU is capable of measuring point of gaze with a precision of less than one-half a degree and accuracy of less than one degree. The system comes with an extensive software library to collect and analyze data.

A number of software packages are available for use in the psychophysics applications. The main statistical software that Dr. Krupinski uses for analyzing general data is StatView (SAS Institute). It is used for general descriptive statistics as well as comparative tests (ANOVA, Chi-Squared etc.). IN addition Dr. Krupinski has the software to run a variety of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses including: CLABROC, CORROC2, INDROC, LABMRMC, LABROC1, LROC, MRMC, PLOTROC, ROCFIT, ROCKIT, RSCORE and ROCPWRPC. Dr. Krupinski maintains the website for the Medical Image Perception Society (http://www.radiology.arizona.edu/krupinski/mips/rocprog.html) that provides links to all of the programs from the various sites that developed them. As new programs become available they are added to the site.

We also have customized software for image display and analysis developed by Dr. Dallas (IMPROCRad). This software takes any type of image (e.g., DICOM, .tif, .img) and displays it on any monitor. There are various navigation functions available (e.g., next image, zoom, pan) as well as image analysis functions (e.g., image statistics such as noise calculations for a given region of interest). When image processing techniques are developed for a given study, these too are implemented in the software for ready use during observer studies.

Contact

   
home contact text only webmaster
copyright© 2008 arizona board of regents