A Novel Technology for Automatically Obtaining Digital Facial Photographs Near-Simultaneously with Portable Radiographs

Abstract

Our objective is to design, implement, and phantom-test a device to automatically obtain point-of-care patient photographs along with portable radiographs. Such photographs could help with detection of wrong-patient errors. Our device consists of a camera controller (CC) and a camera that can be mounted on a portable conventional radiography (CR) machine. Radiation from the CR machine triggers an identification module (IM) embedded in the CR cassette. The IM then sends the cassette identifier-Plate_ID-to the CC along with a trigger to activate the camera. This trigger ensures simultaneous acquisition of radiograph and photograph, and the Plate_ID along with a time stamp ensures binding of the two images. We conducted phantom tests to determine if clinical portable radiography exposure settings (90 to 120 kVp and exposure time ranging from 0.63 to 8.0 ms) are sufficient to trigger the IM. Phantom experiments demonstrate acceptable sensor performance for clinical portable radiography exposures. Simultaneous acquisition of photographs is achieved by integrating a low-cost identification module containing a scintillator-detector into the radiographic cassette. Incident X-rays activate the scintillator-detector triggering photograph acquisition by a camera controller.

Stakeholders’ Perceptions Regarding the Use of Patient Photographs Integrated with Medical Imaging Studies

“…Finally, 41 and 57 % of technologists anticipated spending more time in obtaining the radiographs or encountering technical or software issues with the new technology, respectively. This process has been shown in a prior pilot study to be automated for portable radiographs so that there is no extra work for the technologist at the time of the chest portable studies [18]. Thus any new technology that incorporates photographs with medical imaging is more likely to be accepted if it does not slow down technologists or adversely impact workflow.…”

Interpreting Radiographs with Concurrently Obtained Patient Photographs

“…A general overview of the camera technology is provided by Ramamurthy et al (5), and further details regarding its operation have been described by Ramamurthy et al (6) and Tridandapani et al (7). A small camera is mounted on the x-ray head of the portable radiography machine.…”

“…Motivated by a need to increase the detection rate for wrong-patient errors in radiology (1-4), we developed a technology to automatically obtain point-of-care patient photographs along with portable radiographs (5)(6)(7). Observer studies in controlled laboratory-like settings demonstrated that the addition of patient photographs to portable chest radiographs can increase the detection of wrong-patient errors, without substantially increasing interpretation time (8)(9)(10)(11).…”