LCC Radiography Department goes digital...

There’s more to Xrays than pushing a button and snapping a picture, students in the radiography department at Lenoir Community College have discovered.

“You have to make sure you take the picture so the doctor can see what he needs to see,” said Alicia Neumann, a LCC radiography student. If not, you have to re-shoot the picture, exposing patients again to potentially harmful Xrays, she said.

The department’s new digital hardware is keeping students up to speed with changes in health care, training them on the modern equipment they’ll use in clinics and hospitals after graduation.

The $40,000 upgrade employs a digital scanner that reads phosphor plates and encodes data directly onto discs rather than onto fi lm, which requires developing.

Digital data allow doctors around the world to “telemedicine,” sending X-rays and patient information to each other anywhere, any time, said Alice Kennedy, LCC clinical coordinator and radiography instructor. Users can also zoom in on fractures or abnormalities and enlarge photos, making X-rays more effective than before.

The process also gives students instant X-ray results, allowing them to see their mistakes and learn more quickly than before. Digital equipment shaves a few minutes off the exposure time.

“Before, you had to leave a patient, process the fi lm and make sure it was right and then come back to the patient,” Neumann said.

Going digital has made the process safer for her and nine other students in the class, who are in line to graduate as registered technologists next May.

“The X-rays aren’t processed in chemicals. That’s the best part,” said Bobby Austin, LCC radiography program head. “The chemicals we used before were toxic. You could breathe them in.”

Three of the fi ve health care sites where LCC students intern have moved to the digital X-ray process, as have many other health care facilities.

“(Lenoir Memorial Hospital) already has digital radiography. Most everybody has it,” said Bobby Austin, LCC radiography program head. “This puts us up to speed with health care. You’ve got to keep up with technology or it will run away from you.”

Radiology student Brad Jenkins, right, inserts a plate into the new digital X-ray scanner Monday during classes at Lenoir Community College. Radiology instructor Alice Kennedy , center, and student Amanda Hill watch the procedure. Digital X-rays can be sent to any hospital in the world.