Hologic - Clarity of Vision

The Hologic Solution

When the Center was initially looking to make the transition to a digital environment, they considered several different vendors in the field, and made site visits to view each system at work in the clinical setting. When the research was concluded, the decision was made to go with Hologic.

One of the reasons for this was that Hologic was able to offer a complete package of solutions for the Center's transition. "The clear differentiation between Hologic and the other vendors," Allen says, "is that Hologic came onto the scene with a complete turn-key solution to our needs. Hologic had the Selenia. They had the workstations, both for the radiologists and the technologists. They had the R2 CAD technology, and they had the archiving system." Hologic's Mammography Image Management Solution (MIMS) allows The Breast Center of Greensboro proprietary control of their digital mammography images.

The Breast Center of Greensboro Imaging is partnered with the Moses Cone Medical Center, which already had an archiving system in place. "There was a question," says Allen, "of whether to go with them and store on their PACS system." However, there was an issue of system compatibility, as well as compression conflicts. "We had made such an aggressive pursuit of digital technology, that to have tried to integrate into the Moses Cone PACS would have presented such a significant impediment as to have made any further pursuit not worthwhile."

The Hologic dedicated MIMS system was the perfect system for image storage. Allen says, "With the MIMS, we can access a broad range of images, at a 4-to-1 compression ratio, compared to the PACS, which only gives us a 2.5-to-1 ratio." Cost benefit of the MIMS was also significant. Because of the compression algorithms used in the PACS, the Hologic MIMS archiving system represented almost half the cost of making the PACS at Moses Cone work for the Center.

Working with Hologic

According to Allen, a transition of the sort undertaken by the Breast Center of Greensboro Imaging could not have happened as smoothly as it did without the help and support of a vendor who was dedicated to making everything work.

"Hologic was always right there, and was always willing to listen," Allen says. "They answered every question, and they were able to offer us different solution ideas based on each of the different scenarios we were considering at the time."

"Their responsiveness was impressive," Strable says.

Ultimately," Allen concludes, "Hologic was head and shoulders above the other vendors. Product, responsiveness, delivery of equipment - they did everything to meet our desired timeline."