3D RECONSTRUCTION

Adding a coronary CT angiography (CCTA) program to any emergency department can help save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by reducing unnecessary admissions and also mitigating the medicolegal expenses resulting from misdiagnoses. The upfront equipment, although daunting, is well worth its expense in view of its accuracy particularly in excluding negative cases.

A hospital's adoption of sophisticated 3D imaging entails several important steps, with many factors to consider in order to be successful. Foremost among these factors is undoubtedly the expertise of the technologist's skill in processing and post-processing of the raw data as also the cost of developing a 3D lab. Now, with Telerad India's premier services, the 3D processing can be completely outsourced with consequent significant saving on cost and processing time with complete assurance of quality. The reimbursement for 3D work is simply so low, compared with the technical reimbursement for the CT scan, that the opportunity cost of doing 3D postprocessing is huge. Opportunity cost is defined as the difference between what you made doing what you did and what you could have made doing something else more profitable - in other words, the lost opportunity.

Even if an institution has the equipment for Coronary CCTA in place, the benefits of outsourcing are myriad. Because CT angiography reconstruction is not automated, it takes a technologist around 40 minutes to perform the reconstruction. If that technologist could be performing four CT scans per hour, then the lost revenue per reconstructed CTA amounts to around $700; the lost revenue annually, on one CCTA per day, is $175,000. Adding a dedicated 3D technologist might not be the best solution: Paying one technologist to perform 3D reconstructions for one shift would cost around $500 per day (with salary, benefits, and training), and to have a round-the-clock staff of dedicated 3D technologists could cost as much as $2,000 per day.

How does outsourcing work? TELERAD INDIA acquires the CCTA from the hospital modality, moving it directly to its PACS or IT network.The is received in our 3D-lab where the processing is performed and the information sent back to your PACS, our physicians, your referring physicians, and your emergency department doctors. After acquiring the dataset, TELERAD INDIA assesses the raw data to see which portion of the cardiac interval is best to study, drops and edits center lines, creates morphology and down-the-pipe views of the relevent structures with appropriate construction of MPR, volume-rendered technique and MIP images.

Outsourcing of image processing and post processing can save both the time and the cost of training physicians and technologists, eliminate workstation costs, and eliminate the service contract. Even the largest institutions don't have the technical or professional staff to offer subspecialization 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Outsourcing increases capacity and improves in-house workflow.