Technology has always had a significant pain point, that it renders old equipment unnecessary and obsolete. However, such is not the case with radiology equipment , since there are many software upgrades that can keep one up to speed with the latest advancements without having to spend additional funds on hardware. Further, since there are many budgetary restraints in organizations that have increased further due to the recently bygone recession, and letting go of old hardware is also not a very practical solution.

The perfect means to thus utilize oldradiology equipmentis to combine it with the computed radiography (CR) technology. Simply put, CR is a connecting medium between older radiography versions and the latest updated ones; the hardware used is almost identical, but the conventional film that was used to capture images is replaced with an imaging plate. One of the ingredients of this plate is photostimulatable phosphor, which is a chemical that responds to X-rays. This plate is enclosed inside a cassette, and placed over or under the area of the body that is to be examined as X-rays pass through the same. Following this, the plate is run through the CR scanner radiology equipment , a laser scanner that creates a digital image. One can use old equipment to create images in the DICOM format using portable X-ray machines. This DICOM format is similar to the JPEG image format which can be enhanced using software like Photoshop.

And if you think that CR is similar to digital radiography, let me tell you that even though both can use portable X-ray machines and produce editable images, the nature of the media is where the difference lies. As mentioned above, CR uses an imaging plate located inside a cassette, while digital radiography can capture the image directly on a flat panel detector.