Independent double reading system. Application of digital image management database.

The most important role in a radiologist's work is communicating his findings to the attending physician. This is difficult when the radiologic examinations are performed with portable X-ray units because the attending physician wishes to read the images as soon as possible. To resolve this problem, we have developed an independent double reading system. The hardware consists of a magnetic card reader, a display station, a personal computer and a mouse, all linked with the digital image database and a communication network between HIS and RIS. We also present the software of this system and evaluate the results of the implementation to establish the accuracy of the technique. It was concluded that this system could expand the contribution of the radiologist to portable radiographic examinations and to improve the quality of the RIS database.