Get copies of your radiographic tests on CD
 

Maybe everyone knows how easy this is but I didn't. I've always had to argue HIPPA with the front desk clerk or check my x-rays out to Dr Jon Doe's office and haded quite got them back yet. I carry them with me for an initial doctor visit. It really helps a lot.

Today, I got copies of a CT put onto a CD. It has its own built in reader. Very neat and it pays to keep records of your body for comparison.

You occasionally run into problems with incompatible image formats when you're sending your CDs out from one area to another to get opinions. If you run into that, there are programs that do a reasonable job of converting images; some will even to it for a batch of files at a time so you don't need to convert each image separately.

The only problem I have run into is that some of the free viewer software will not run on Windows Vista operating system to this very day. If the doctor does not have his own software or a XP computer this could be a problem. but then, you might be at the wrong doctor.

We had a radiologist who's free viewer refused to run on the Alpha Klinik's and Bertagnoli's computers. That's why I know about the image conversion software. We ultimately had to convert all of the image files on the CD from the radiologist to a format that would work overseas and burn a new CD with the converted images. It wasn't a pretty solution but it did work.

Macs
 

They also don't run on Apple Macs. I have both Windows Vista machines and Macs at home, and I can't even look at my own studies. I have to look at them at work! Oh the irony.:disgust:

The problem I have found with CDs is the resolution isn't very good. they are not hig def pics, they are resized for CD. however, I have all my MRIs and x-rays in one location instead of carting around film sheets.

There are many setting on the software. I have found the resolution on the CDs to be as good as anything on the printed radiographs.

It depends on the system. Sometimes images on the CD are poorer copies of what the machine produces, suitable for the uninformed patient to feel like her or she got something, sometimes they were really good quality stuff suitable for another surgeon to read. Needless to say, we got in arguments with the providers of the first CD and tried to always go to the providers of the second type of CD whenever we had a choice.