Fujifilm celebrates 50 years in Europe
Members of the Fujifilm Medical UK team.
As Fujifilm chalks up half a century doing business in Europe, the Japanese company that made its name in the 1930s with camera and film technology has been reflecting on its entry into the medical imaging market.
In 1936 the company started producing x-ray film, an industry that saw little change for decades. By the 1970s Fujifilm recognised that medical diagnostics was moving into the digital age. Its engineers began to research and develop technologies and, in 1983, the world’s first digital radiography system was launched.
Recognising the significance of the internet, Fujifilm took the decision to develop the world’s first web-based PACS. Synapse PACS was introduced in 1999 and is now on to its fifth generation HTML5 web-based solution.
To accelerate the development of its product portfolio Fujifilm centralised its R&D at one laboratory in Japan. Today, the technology that allows mobile phones to take digital photographs that automatically improve image quality and recognise face are making their way into Fujifilm’s DR portfolio to improve image quality at lower doses. These developments have been integrated into the heart of Fujifilm’s general x-ray modality imaging in the Console Advance workstation and Synapse 3D post-processing solution. Both feature anatomical recognition algorithms to stabilise and display optimal image quality.
See the full report on page 9 of the June 2016 issue of RAD Magazine.
