Geneva University Hospital

This Apple Science podcast features radiology Professor Osman Ratib of the Geneva University Hospital. Dr. Ratib wanted to give his clinician colleagues an interactive 3D look at the results of radiology exams to improve image analysis and health care management. Workstations from the scanner vendors were too few, too costly, and limited in capability. He wanted a set of sophisticated navigation tools that would run on a powerful but more cost-effective platform, so that they could be deployed in clinical offices, libraries, and tumor board reviews where physicians could readily use them. After a test installation in the Radiology Department, physicians in 15 hospital departments were given the opportunity to acquire Mac systems running OsiriX, an open-source DICOM viewer. They use 60 Mac systems, mostly high-end Mac Pro and iMac, in offices, libraries and conference rooms to review the results of radiological exams in 3D format with the easy-to-use Mac GUI. The accessibility of sophisticated visual analysis tools improves the quality of surgery planning and healthcare, helping to improve the quality of surgical planning and patient care.