Competition

Our Competition & Industry Discussion

Superstition renders a man a fool, and skepticism makes him mad. - Fielding

Progressive Diagnostic Imaging, Inc. (PDi) did not invent this industry. They have simply taken advantage of the existing market and improved upon the technology ...substantially.

About 20 years ago a group of medical doctors at the University of Colorado received a $1 million dollar federal grant and began "digitizing" x-rays. Their method was mechanically accurate, but crude in that their system did not actually use the x-ray image in the final report. They simply saved the coordinates of each corner of each vertebrae and used the computer to draw a cartoon image of the patient's spine next to a cartoon image of a healthy spine. This was useful in generating a large database of measurements from which a variety studies could be performed. The reports were fairly accurate but the cartoons looked a bit unprofessional. It was clear that there was no way to actually verify if the x-ray technician had placed a point in the right place. The system lacked what is called "intraexaminer reliability", that is, there was no way to verify the results. Yes, the system filled a need, but computer technology was still in the stone age just 20 years ago. It would have been cost prohibitive to manipulate 30 full x-ray images that were 1.3 megabytes each like we do now. Additionally, the technology was not available to print photographic quality, custom measured x-ray reports.

The developers of the program licensed their source code to several different companies. Each licensee developed their own version of substantially similar cartoon drawing digitization machines. Some of those companies built and sold complete systems to doctors to use on their patients' x-rays and some of those companies simply provided the service.

The industry made one large mistake. As the computer world advanced rapidly, it kept drawing cartoons.

Some years ago, a research group of programmers filed for patent rights to the advanced imaging technology that is now licensed solely to PDi. There was no federal grant and there were no paychecks. Three years were spent programming late into the night. There are still a number of reputable, hardworking companies drawing cartoons. Even though our product is at least as accurate and far more believable than the cartoons, we compete head-to-head with those that are still in business. PDi still supports and respects its competitors.

Progressive Diagnostic Imaging uses state-of-the-art technology