Breast Imaging Reporting And Data System (birads) Capabilities

To be up to date and fully functional, most medical offices and hospitals that offer mammographies and resulting digital medical imaging also use BIRADS, or Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System. The system is used by medical professionals to standardize the physician reporting that goes along with mammography examinations and testing. A mammography workstation, which features a mammography viewer and pacs ris software system, will also usually include the BIRADS component to make the entire unit perform at its peak in a mammography imaging center or any medical facility that offers mammograms.

The Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System was developed due to a need for standardization in reporting used with mammographies. A diversity of reporting standards leads to misunderstandings and uneven patient care, and thus the BIRADS system came into being for quality control.

The BIRADS system, when used with mammography radiology medical imaging, has to do with a standardization of the assessment categories used after a mammogram has been interpreted by a physician. Numbers from one to six are used, with one showing a mammogram to be negative for cancer, and ranging up to six, when a digital medical image reveals proven malignancy exists from a known biopsy. It also provides a standardized way of communicating numerically about breast composition. One in this instance refers to breast composition which is almost all fat, and ranges up to a four for extremely dense breast composition, with a range of gradients in between.

A system such as BIRADS was needed, and most especially due to advances in digital distribution of patient digital medical imaging, to improve understanding between conferencing and consulting physicians. When hospitals and medical offices are digitally networked, any number of authorized medical professionals may be called in to evaluate patient digital images, and if there is not a consistent understanding of the interpretations of the medical images, then patient care can suffer. A simple and unambiguous system, BIRADS is used as part of the reporting that is performed at a mammography imaging center, and is connected to the medical digital images and other reports so that physicians have a complete record to use for diagnoses.

After the capture of the digital medical image, the mammo viewer is the first tool that physicians turn to in order to complete their evaluations of the images. Viewers allow for the manipulation and enhancement of the digital images, giving physicians the information they need to provide better patient care, and then notations in BIRADS system reporting makes for a more efficient communication system for medical professionals working with mammographies.

By: Susan Slobac

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mammography workstation pacs ris mammography viewer