My afternoon with Apple

[sunfast]

Yesterday I attended an Apple Event for the first time at their "Executive Briefing Centre" in London.

I am a medical imaging scientist by trade which is an area Apple are becoming more and more interested in. I went along to an event they put on about this yesterday which was excellent.

First, we were briefed about Apple themselves by the head of Science and something devision from Cupertino. She talked a bit about their reasons for the intel switch, gave some chat about sales and showed their ideal medical imaging workstation - Quad Powermac, 8GB Ram, 1TB HDD, dual 30" ACDs. Quite something.

We then played with the software and had a 20" Core Duo iMac each to use. All had 2GB RAM interestingly.

But I was very impressed. And the refreshments were the best at any seminar I've ever been too!

 

[varmit]

Yesterday I attended an Apple Event for the first time at their "Executive Briefing Centre" in London.

I am a medical imaging scientist by trade which is an area Apple are becoming more and more interested in. I went along to an event they put on about this yesterday which was excellent.

First, we were briefed about Apple themselves by the head of Science and something devision from Cupertino. She talked a bit about their reasons for the intel switch, gave some chat about sales and showed their ideal medical imaging workstation - Quad Powermac, 8GB Ram, 1TB HDD, dual 30" ACDs. Quite something.

We then played with the software and had a 20" Core Duo iMac each to use. All had 2GB RAM interestingly.

But I was very impressed. And the refreshments were the best at any seminar I've ever been too!

So the question is, are you going to use their technology in the near future? Or is it just something you might use in the far future.

 

[Abstract]

What's a medical imaging scientist? Is it like basic x-ray, CT, MRI type stuff? Is it like Medical Physics, because that's what I'm studying. Just curious. Almost applied to Kings College or UCL, but they didn't have any interesting PhD projects being advertised, which is too bad.

Anyway, it sounds fun. Which major medical systems companies have software that runs on Macs? I'm sure it depends on what you do. I've never dealt with imaging directly, so I don't know the typical software given to you by GE, Siemens, etc.

 

[sunfast]

What's a medical imaging scientist? Is it like basic x-ray, CT, MRI type stuff? Is it like Medical Physics, because that's what I'm studying. Just curious. Almost applied to Kings College or UCL, but they didn't have any interesting PhD projects being advertised, which is too bad.

Anyway, it sounds fun. Which major medical systems companies have software that runs on Macs? I'm sure it depends on what you do. I've never dealt with imaging directly, so I don't know the typical software given to you by GE, Siemens, etc.

Yeah, it's medical physics - but on the imaging side (not Radiotherapy, Lasers etc). I did my MSc in Med Phys at UCL and now work for the NHS. If you are interested in places doing PhDs in Med Phys have a look at http://www.ipem.ac.uk as there are a few posted there that aren't uni based (like Imperial Cancer Research etc)

Most medical systems run on Windows these days since the release of XP. All used to be UNIX before then. Apple are trying to break into the final step - reviewing and processing images which is much more suited to OS X.

As for my own usage, I run OsiriX on my MacBook for projects I'm working on but my hospital is all XP / UNIX. A shame really as a Mac is a near perfect workstation for Medical Imaging.

 

[Peace]

I use OsiriX on my iMac 20" w 2Gigs RAM and it does great..

 

[lonepilgrim]

Most medical systems run on Windows these days

 

[sunfast]

OsiriX is stunning software. Absolutely stunning. I've never seen such accomplished and featured freeware.

But as for the systems, sadly all the major manufacturers (GE, Siemens, Philips, Toshiba etc) use Windows to control the scanners. It's actually perfectly usable as they aren't connected to the internet and have no other software on them. Our old MRI scanner (1996) runs UNIX but is much less user friendly as it doesn't have an associated GUI. Our new one (2004) is XP.