The stress and anxiety of a visit to the hospital or any other health care facility can be extremely overwhelming and frightening, but experienced healthcare providers can alleviate that unease by exceeding patient expectations for treatment and care. Not only do all patients deserve to be treated with the best possible care, but they should be treated and diagnosed with state of the art equipment. Radiologists are one of the healthcare professionals that rely the most heavily on the proficiency of their radiology equipment to provide quality images and insure patient safety. Ionizing radiation is very important in the world of medical imaging because it allows healthcare professionals to noninvasively produce pictures of the body to diagnose injuries and disease. Some examples of medical imaging studies that use radiation are X-rays, fluoroscopy, mammography, and computed tomography scans. X-rays may be painless, but are in fact harmful to the body because they use high energy particles that deposit enough energy into tissue that it can change molecules or proteins by ejecting electrons from atoms. To obtain a quality image radiographers use their expertise and training to properly expose patients to the lowest possible amount of radiation that will still provide a quality image for diagnoses, but their abilities cannot eliminate the extra radiation that is emitted by older equipment. A radiographer's skill also does not allow them to produce images with quality that is beyond the ability of their equipment. It is crucial for healthcare providers to replace outdated imaging equipment with the latest and most advanced radiology equipment to provide the community with the most accurate diagnoses, improve practice efficiently, insure safety, and provide the most ethical care.
The importance of providing a clear image is vital in providing the most accurate diagnoses, and Digital Radiography (DR) produces the highest quality images that are available today.