A Novel Technology for Automatically Obtaining Digital Facial Photographs Near-Simultaneously with Portable Radiographs

Abstract

Our objective is to design, implement, and phantom-test a device to automatically obtain point-of-care patient photographs along with portable radiographs. Such photographs could help with detection of wrong-patient errors. Our device consists of a camera controller (CC) and a camera that can be mounted on a portable conventional radiography (CR) machine. Radiation from the CR machine triggers an identification module (IM) embedded in the CR cassette. The IM then sends the cassette identifier—Plate_ID—to the CC along with a trigger to activate the camera. This trigger ensures simultaneous acquisition of radiograph and photograph, and the Plate_ID along with a time stamp ensures binding of the two images. We conducted phantom tests to determine if clinical portable radiography exposure settings (90 to 120 kVp and exposure time ranging from 0.63 to 8.0 ms) are sufficient to trigger the IM. Phantom experiments demonstrate acceptable sensor performance for clinical portable radiography exposures. Simultaneous acquisition of photographs is achieved by integrating a low-cost identification module containing a scintillator-detector into the radiographic cassette. Incident X-rays activate the scintillator-detector triggering photograph acquisition by a camera controller.