computer aided detection (CAD) is not what the DViS does...in layman speak, it is software which looks at images and looks for patterns which then, if necessary, flag the image for the likelihood of disease...
thus, it is a diagnostic tool...or shall i say an add-on or advancement in diagnostic imaging... the buzz on CAD has been associated mostly with detection/screening of cancer in mammography.
a way to imaging this, picture yourself laying on the ground in the forest and looking up into the trees...trying to view the sky...all the branchings of the trees are mingled and criss crossed and the branches look like thousands of cross-fingers or arteries (like vascular nodular tissue)...and then imaging that there are bright patches of the sky penetrating through the canopy where there is an area or two or so of hardly any tree branches and so on...(by the way, the contrast between the bright background sky and dark branches in this analogy is the ***contrast*** in the image)... however, you are trying to find where the sun is located... remember it's pretty clustered rhrough the canopy as you look up and perhaps the sun isn't so easy to note compared to some of those bright spots in your 'region of interest,' and perhaps the sun is dimmed by being behind some clouds, etc.... well, CAD would look at this picture and locate the sun for you... or in other words, give the radiologist a tool for focus in on a specific region...
what CAD is really doing i believe is looking for fractals (this is a mathematical pattern)...
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now what the DViS is gonna be all about is serving as the next generation "c-arm" for fluoro-guided surgery/procedures, by providing 3d realtime imagery.
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i'll also note that the other part of that advisory committee mtg is going to discuss mammography... mammo i extra highly regulated...
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and lastly the ability for the modality to produce those images and thus inherent contrast is tested (by physics acceptance testing)...this is refered to as high/low contrast imagery. but, that is completely different that CAD...
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the requested images which were sent was probably a combination (in my speculation) of images and the tests results of high/low contrast...the test is routine and done either biannually or annully, for our c-arm and its application, it's annually. to give the FDA some objective data.
