Digital imaging informatics and workflow: Rad Tech

Digital imaging involves much more than producing an image. Behind each image, connected systems move patient information, images, and reports to the right place.

The workflow for digital imaging begins with order entry and continues through image acquisition, quality review, storage, interpretation, and reporting.
As a radiologic technologist, understanding this process is essential to your role in protecting image quality, patient information, and data integrity.

Medical imaging organizations help create standards that make digital imaging safe, consistent, and interoperable, so images can be efficiently shared when the information is needed. These include Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine, or DICOM, which provides a standard format for storing, transmitting, and viewing medical images; Health Level Seven, or HL7, that supports the exchange of health information; and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, or IHE, that helps to manage and integrate standards and information.

Okay, let's follow one imaging examination through the digital workflow. The process starts when a healthcare provider orders an imaging examination, and the patient arrives for the procedure.

At registration, the patient and order are linked to the correct electronic medical record, or EMR, and the radiology information system, or RIS, routes the order to the imaging modality worklist.

Then a radiographer first matches the patient with the order, prepares and positions the patient, selects the protocol, performs the examination, and acquires the image.

Once the image quality is verified, it goes to the Medical Image Management and Processing System, commonly known as MIMPS, for storage and interpretation by the radiologist. The finalized report then returns to the EMR. This workflow supports efficiency while allowing images to be stored, accessed, shared, and managed electronically.

Okay, let's take a closer look at the MIMPS. The MIMPS connects image acquisition, display, network communication, and storage.

It receives images from imaging equipment, stores them in an archive, and makes them available at authorized workstations. MIMPS makes it easier to retrieve prior studies, compare images, and share them with authorized members of the care team. It also supports long-term archiving and backup.

Underneath this whole process, a computer network connects imaging equipment, the MIMPS, the RIS, and authorized workstations, so images and related information can move between them. Teleradiology uses this network to send an image to an authorized radiologist at another location for interpretation. This can provide timely coverage when a radiologist is not on-site and supports continuity of care across locations. Reliable transmission, secure access, and patient confidentiality remain essential in teleradiology.

The Electronic Medical Record or EMR is a digital version of a patient's healthcare information, including their medical history, laboratory test results, and radiology reports, while the RIS manages radiology-specific workflow, including orders, scheduling, modality worklists, and reports, and the MIMPS manages the images. These systems exchange information, so the correct order reaches the correct modality, images link to the correct patient, and the final report returns to the patient's EMR.