Imagining the Future of Imaging

I spent 3 days last week at the European Congress of Radiology, previewing the latest technologies for acquiring, processing, viewing, analyzing, and archiving diagnostic images of the human body.

Wow! The technical and clinical innovation in this field is astounding. Science, Technology and Medicine converge to create wondrous solutions to view and analyze the inner workings of our bodies. One clearly emerging trend is that new imaging modalities and analysis tools are exponentially increasing the quantity and quality of diagnostic information available, and in the image review phase the radiologist moves from viewing images to interacting with them. As one of the VIP speakers, Prof. Dieter Enzmann pointed out, "radiology is in the information business, not the film-reading business."

Radiologists, among other things, are finely tuned pattern recognition experts, able to extract detailed clinical information from the rich and beautiful 2D, 3D,and 4D images they create. Yet, ironically, these masters of visual interpretation are often forced to work with clunky user interfaces and poor (or absent) information design. Tiny icons cling to the borders of huge, ultra-high resolution screens. Rows of unformatted text and numbers cut through the middle of the image that has cost so much effort and genius to create. Rigidly defined "hanging" arrangements (from the film-reading days) limit the ability to correlate images from different modalities.

Another guest star, Prof. Hedvig Hricak delivered this inspiring message to that radiological community "We need to change from a technology-centered speciality [...]We need to continuously evolve, anticipate opportunities, love change, develop new procedures and adapt to new environments." To which I can only wholeheartedly agree, and humbly propose that design can play a key role in making that happen.

− Thomas Sutton, Associate General Manager, frog Milan