Dicom Capture?

We send our scans to a local medical radiologist who wants to know if we have looked in the Dicom capture system so we can eliminate the need to burn discs. Anyone using it? And how can we get it?

Creating the arch and other concerns

Like Matt Kroona I sometimes ponder what I am doing, more correctly if my doing is correct.
1)I want to know what the criteria is for creating the arch for the "oblique" view (pano). I recently had a mandibular canal large enough to drive a truck through and was playing around with creating the "best" visionary of the canal with regards to the pano. I started to wonder if showing the canal vs keeping the perpendicular for the cross sections conflicted. When I am creating the arch for the (pano) I try to keep the perpendicular as close to 90 degrees without losing the canal but what if your losing the canal by keeping the perpendicular?
2)On another tangent. I am checking each scan for movement; by using a technique suggested last iCAT meeting. This entails going to the raw data, rotating the skull then bringing the cursor to the symphisis and rolling the ball from 366 to 1. I am finding that many times there is a contrast change from the 366 to 1 giving the "impression" that there is patient movement. I recently started using the velcro strap across the patients forehead and it seems to help.
3)Lastly, does anyone check the success of the calibration by taking a scout view and seeing how the "white screen" appears? Arun had made a comment one day, when I was sharing my computer with him, that he could see that I needed to do another calibration because the screen was not uniformed, too much saturation. You can actually look at the center of your screen and it appears as though there is a vertebre running down the center and the outer borders have a greyish look.
OK folks, I haven't gone over the Matt's or Eric's script but I am close.

Superior Quality CDRs

We use a CDR that has the label already attached, which eliminates the procedure of printing a separate label and then attempting to perfectly center it on the CD. As Matt Kroona has already mentioned, do not ever use a line labeler because it makes the disk unbalanced and leads to higher CD failure rates. Remember in Chemistry lab when you had to counterbalance the centrifuge? It is the same principle. After the data is burned on the CD, we use the Epson inkjet R 340 printer that has a special adapter to print directly on the CD. This gives us the ability to customize the CD label with images and is the same printer we use for the i-CAT prints (see photographs).

Once we finish our current supply of CDRs, we plan to purchase from Master Recording Supply (714) 556-6700 extension 112. They offer a CDR made by Taiyo Yuden, a Japanese company that originally invented the optical CD. They also hold a unique patent which places a thicker layer of organic dye (blue-green) that makes their product last longer than the typical CD. The Taiyo Yuden website describes their CD/DVD as follows: Dye design for high-speed recording, wide jitter margin with precision thermal inerference control, stability at high speed rotation with improved mechanical characteristics, superior playability and superior reliability. The price is only 32 cents each with a minimum order of 100.
Microboards Technology DX-2 inkjet disk publisher is a combination burn and print system ($3000) that Diane from Yamamoto Radiography in Beverly Hills finds fast and reliable. This hardware/software system starts with a stack of blank Taiyo Yuden CDRs (the only brand she uses because of a zero failure rate) and will automatically burn the data and print the patient information on each CD. A lower version DX-1 is available for $2200.

How Do I Compete Against a FREE SCAN???

I saw this in my local paper yesterday. I called and they have an i-CAT in their office.

What are the best cds?

What are the best cds to burn to with the least cd failures? Where is the best deal to get them?

Nobel Biocare

I recently had a edentulous patient in for a Nobel Biocare scan and I wasn't sure how to scan the guides. Normally I scan the guide without the bite register but what should I do when there are 2 guides (upper & lower)? I did the following scans:
1-patient with the guide in
2-lower guide only
3-upper guide only
4-upper and lower guides in occlusion with no bite register

I have not heard back from the doctor yet but I thought I'd see what others are doing in cases like this.

CD Labels - Don't Do It!

Most of you probably already know this but I thought I'd post it anyway. For the last few years, we've been putting labels on the blank CDs that we burn for our doctors. It helps us keep track of who gets a CD, and confirms whether it's been burned or not. I would guess that we had a 10-20% failure rate on our burns, which I attributed to the disks we were using. On the advice of Rocky Mountain Oral X-ray, we ordered 1000 custom printed disks on which we WRITE the patient name & date in felt pen. Much to my amazement, our burn failure rate has dropped to less than 1%. The moral of the story is - don't put labels on your disks!