When Naval Hospital Oak Harbor (NHOH), Oak Harbor, Washington, began the process of transitioning to digital imaging as part of a government initiative, one of the first steps was upgrading both mammographic and dental imaging equipment from analog to digital. In January of 2009, the hospital installed its first Aspire™ Clear View-CSm full-field digital mammography (FFDM) system from Fujifilm. “The government selected the product as part of the overall transition to digital,” says Kim Post, department head for radiology at NHOH. “Being satisfied with the image quality, financially, it made more sense to go with CR than DR at the time.”

Mary Anne Mullen, mammography technologist at the hospital says the new mammography system has helped improve throughput. “I think it’s a lot more convenient to remain in the room with the patient. The exam goes a lot more quickly.” Images from the first views are already displayed on the AWS-c modality workstation by the time Mullen finishes an exam, and quality control is faster and more efficient, she says. “The patients are in and out in a shorter amount of time. I do a lot of walk-ins, so improving efficiency is an important benefit.”

Mullen adds that the versatility of the system is a big plus. “I have the opportunity to select either a 18x24cm or 24x30cm detector based on breast size, which is nice, because I do a lot of smaller patients,” she says. And having access to Fujifilm’s Synapse® PACS for mammography enables easier comparison of priors. “I can access and display all the prior patient images on Synapse, which is a huge benefit,” Mullen says,

The hospital’s mammography department was already using Fujifilm’s Synapse PACS platform when the Navy selected Synapse for implementation across all of its hospital sites worldwide. “Mammography and dental were the only imaging systems here that were running analog,” Post recalls. “When we implemented the new mammography unit, we got the Synapse PACS for mammography to go along with it. Now we’re in the process of changing our larger PACS system to Fujifilm as well.”

Post is looking forward to the hospital-wide deployment of the Synapse platform for a number of reasons. “It’s Web-based, so I hope it will improve the viewing situation for the doctors in some of our regional clinics,” she says. “It will also be nice because the radiologist will have one workstation to read everything instead of two, one for mammography and one for everything else.”

She adds that NHOH’s onsite radiologist will benefit from the expansion because of the Synapse platform’s ease-of-use. “Now that he’s accustomed to the mammography tools, I think reading the studies goes a lot faster for him,” she says. “Once he switches everything over to Synapse, I think he’ll be able to read other studies more quickly as well.”

Meanwhile, the faster workflow in the mammography suite continues to dazzle, according to Mullen. “It’s a great system,” she says. “We can do patients more rapidly and efficiently, and they appreciate that as much as we do.”