What Do We Need To Advance Pacs Workstations: A Critical Review With Suggestions

The technology for building workstations suitable for the display of most medical images has existed for almost a decade. Yet the diagnostic interpretation process has not shifted from film to such workstations in nearly as large numbers as had been predicted. While, in a large part, this is due to the high costs for acquisition of picture archiving and communications system (PACS) equipment, there is also the aspect of physician acceptance. Since the workstation serves as the primary system-to-person interface, an examination of the way in which workstations are designed and the way in which radiologists actually work yields some insight into the relative lack of penetration of workstations into the diagnostic image interpretation task.