Why don’t medical field make a universal format for medical image? Can’t read X-ray/MRI taken oversea

[Anonymous]

I’m venting for sure but at the same time questions. And if you know the answer to my question, would you share with us? TKIA.

We were just told at the Doctors office, their machine (whatever that is) can’t read the CD we brought back from oversea. They said the format is different that the server isn’t reading the image. Therefore, X-ray needs to be retaken.
That’s so unnecessary, the sort of problem we wanted to avoid and the reason why we brought back the CD.
So, became curious why doesn’t the medical field make the image format universal to minimize unnecessary retake?
Google search suggests, one can read the CD in the regular computer/laptop. Had we known this prior to the office visit, we will try to test that. But, we were in 100% belief the Doctor office would be able to read them. Never ever thought about the incompatible format issue.
Not to mention, MRI in the states is super tedious for us to schedule and the $$$$cost. We, the patient, want to bring good images from oversea (we just happened to run into the circumstances which allowed us to get MRI within 5 days and relatively cheap).

Incomparable format? This region has substantial foreign born residents and cannot imagine none of them take images oversea and bring it back to the states. All of them run into same issue (unable to read, huh?!!)? What machine (?)would they need to read the foreign generated image? Any workaround?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

It is not the image format, it is the software problem. Happened to me between 2 dentist offices 2 miles apart.

[Anonymous]

Usually there is a "view only" version of the software which is free or not pricey
If there is no free version, the office may ask you to pay the cost to acquire the software

[Anonymous]

Have the doctor overseas send them.

And, you sound cheap.

[Anonymous]

The CT image, Xray etc, are the same. What’s different is the CD, which different regions have different formats. It was initially designed that way to prevent music and video piracy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The CT image, Xray etc, are the same. What’s different is the CD, which different regions have different formats. It was initially designed that way to prevent music and video piracy.

you also need different software programs to open the images. Depending on the office IT policies, you might be blocked from installing new software on their system even if the view only version is on the CD

[Anonymous]

OP back. I kind suspected about the software part, but didn’t think about the blank CD itself. Didn’t know the region code restriction on the empty blank CD.

We might take the US region coded blank CD to the clinic to test it next time. I would not know the software compatibility so if worst case, we will ask the foreign clinic to send the image directly to the US office.

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

This makes me angry. DD injured a few teeth during gymnastics, and we ran into the same issue. Everyone kept wanting to blast her with radiation over and over just because they couldn't read another dentist's x-rays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The CT image, Xray etc, are the same. What’s different is the CD, which different regions have different formats. It was initially designed that way to prevent music and video piracy.

CDs don't have region codes.

[Anonymous]

OP back, so it’s the format the images are burned to CD has the restrictive region code? For the most general clinic in US to be able to read the images, if taken oversea, these images need to be burned to CD with multi-region (?) compatible code to begin with, and that’s the problem here?

I mean who has that kind of knowledge before bringing the images back to the states?!? This sounds such a rip off from the patient perspective.

Anyway, now I’ve learnt this, hopefully we can make next CD US compatible.

[Anonymous]

It's called DICOM. It's been around for 40+ years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This makes me angry. DD injured a few teeth during gymnastics, and we ran into the same issue. Everyone kept wanting to blast her with radiation over and over just because they couldn't read another dentist's x-rays.

Awww. That’s so frustrating!! Ours was knee injury and we couldn’t show the soft tissue MRI images (US clinic retook X-ray images).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This makes me angry. DD injured a few teeth during gymnastics, and we ran into the same issue. Everyone kept wanting to blast her with radiation over and over just because they couldn't read another dentist's x-rays.

You can't bill for reading another doctor's x-rays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This makes me angry. DD injured a few teeth during gymnastics, and we ran into the same issue. Everyone kept wanting to blast her with radiation over and over just because they couldn't read another dentist's x-rays.

You can't bill for reading another doctor's x-rays.

Yeah, so last keep blasting a growing child with radiation. HCWs are total POSs sometimes.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I’ve briefly worked with the interventional radiologist, so I knew about the DICOM (like I just knew the images were in DICOM but nothing more than that). But then why the DICOM format images generated oversea cannot be displayed in the US clinic? Wouldn’t the images be generated based on the same/universal DICOM format(?)? Is it then a purely the software issue? Like the above response, patient needs to pay EXTRA to use the compatible software to read the foreign images?