Healthcare - Software Solutions

syngo's easy-to-use graphical user interface is tailored to the needs of physicians and healthcare workers

In addition to optimum image quality, a medical diagnostic system needs to have the right software to be user-friendly. To achieve this goal, Siemens Medical Solutions and the user interface design experts from Siemens Corporate Technology developed syngo, an award-winning software platform. syngo serves as a uniform basis for all imaging processes, including MR, CT and ultrasound systems as well as nuclear medicine and patient monitoring systems. It not only controls the image recording process, but also allows the images to be viewed, post-processed and archived. Thanks to syngo, doctors are no longer faced with having to call up various programs, and can instead quickly switch back and forth between process steps or patients as easily as if they were flipping through a file of index cards. Instead of giving a confusing list of parameters, syngo guides doctors through the examination and evaluation processes intuitively with the help of easily understandable symbols. Nevertheless, processes in hospitals could be optimized even further—for example, by using Soarian, a newly developed workflow system. Soarian processes and networks a hospital's entire data flow—including all syngo workstations. By also monitoring all diagnostic, therapeutic and treatment steps, Soarian helps ensure continued improvement in the quality of medical care.

Tim Schröder

A lung nodule as detected by ICAD. The system provides measurements that support diagnostic decision-making

Until now, radiologists were heading for a colossal case of information overload. "A single CT or MR scan of a patient's lungs or colon can produce up to 500 high resolution images," say Dr. Ming Fang, head of the Intelligent Vision and Reasoning Department at Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) in Princeton, New Jersey. With this in mind, SCR researchers have pioneered a new technology called Interactive Computer-Aided Diagnostics (ICAD), a system that helps radiologists make accurate and consistent diagnostic decisions. Recently introduced to the market by Siemens Medical Solutions as Lung CARE, the software helps radiologists detect abnormal and potentially cancerous lung nodules. The technology is especially useful in helping physicians detect small lung nodules that are often overlooked by radiologists. ICAD's automatic detection component (pending FDA approval) accomplishes this by sifting through hundreds of images and highlighting regions that look suspicious. Radiologists can then use the software to isolate potential nodules, measure their vol-umes and track them during follow-up exams. More advanced medical applications for colon and prostate cancer diagnosis are currently under development.

Arthur F. Pease