Dr. Dutton

Finally, a couple of inches of snow on the ground! May be able to use those ski season passes yet.

The big news this week is the installation of a digital x-ray system on Thursday. Digital radiography is becoming the standard for taking x-rays.

Basically the x-ray beam energizes a digital sensor plate that is read by a computer. The big advantage is it dramatically reduces the number of retakes needed due to exposure issues. So there is less radiation for your pet and the staff. It also reduces the amount of time it takes for an x-ray. Since all the x-ray beam that passes through the pet is captured on the plate, it's easy to correct the exposure versus the older method of using a sheet of x-ray film. It's the same as an 35 mm film camera and a digital camera.

Other advantages include being able to e-mail x-rays without the loss of detail. Currently we take a digital picture of the x-ray hanging on the lightbox viewer. We can also save the image within the pet's medical record and have instant recall. We can send the radiography via e-mail to a radiologist to read. Less storage space is required also.

The cost of these units have dropped over the years to the point that we can utilize it with only a 5% cost increase.