iCAD, one of the leading CAD applications for mammography announced it's new PureLook Mammography Film Digitizer. This product fills an interesting and necessary gap. One important measurement for diagnosis in radiological images is change over time. Many patients have had film screenings in the past while recent scans have all been digital. The PureLook digitizer scans the film into high resolution digital images to provide the same analysis that the digital images currently receive.

The press release explains it a little more eloquently that I did:

Mammography relies heavily upon a comparative look at prior years of mammograms to check for change over time. According to the American Cancer Society over 90% of the estimated 48 million mammograms taken this year are for women who have previous studies. Digital Mammography can represent a break in the context between the prior year mammograms and the current digital mammogram. This is a major concern since mammography is interpreted with as much emphasis on information from the prior years as the current year. PureLook was specifically developed to capture the full fidelity of film based mammograms to avoid any break in context and provide the gateway for clinics to transition to digital.

I guess the significant part of their product is that the scanner doesn't use mirrors or traditional lenses that typically distort the image in some way. Pretty cool niche product here.