Barnsley overcomes artefact issues

Medical imaging directorate manager Simon Ainsworth and Fujifilm Medical Systems UK general manager Adrian Waller.

Barnsley Breast Imaging Service (BIS) and Fujifilm say they have worked together in order to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and forged an exceptional partnership.

In 2012 Barnsley BIS took delivery of two new Fujifilm Amulet mammography systems.  “The service was performing well until it encountered a unique and challenging problem in late 2014,” explained medical imaging directorate manager Simon Ainsworth.  “Electrical engineering works carried out in the basement below the department generated a new artefact on the images of one of the Fujifilm Amulets.  The room was closed whilst extensive investigations and proposed solutions were trialled.  As would be expected, the service suffered and performance declined with regular breaches of national targets.

“It would have been easy for the two organisations to become embroiled in a bitter dispute, but the efforts of the team at Fujifilm combined with the resilience of the Barnsley BIS team, led to a strengthened relationship and a positive outcome.”

Fujifilm general manager Adrian Waller said: “Barnsley’s investment in a new Innovality demonstrates the confidence it has in the quality of the Fujifilm mammography system, and its decision to undertake the initial NHSBSP evaluation of the Innovality, completed last year, further corroborates this.”

See the full report on page 23 of the March 2017 issue of RAD Magazine.