X-Ray Scanning and Disposal

We’re your one-stop shop for all your needs:

• We scan your X-rays
• We dispose/recycle your X-rays
• We reclaim the silver from the X-rays
• Certified shredding and destruction

Go Digital and Go Green with X-Rayscan.com

How Does Our One-Stop Shop Work?

Contact us and we’ll arrange for pick-up, scanning, destruction and recycling of your old X-rays.  Just tell us how many you have and whether they’re in jackets or not.  We’ll take care of the rest.

We work with a variety of recycling companies that collect old X-ray material  and that  have the capabilities to recycle and refine the following items:

All X-ray film and jackets are treated as confidential information. We adhere to HIPAA privacy regulations.  A Certificate of Destruction can be supplied upon request.

About Our X-Ray Scanning Process

X-rays are converted to electronic files using film digitizer machines that can be used for a variety of applications, including PACS, mammography CAD, teleradiology, oncology, and orthopedic surgery. Film digitizers play a key role in medical imaging systems during the conversion from paper/film systems to digital systems.

We use only the best X-Ray scanning equipment and software in our shop:

• • VIDAR’s DiagnosticPRO® Edge film digitizer takes the highest reliability, image quality and consistency of any digitizer.  With double the scanning speed of most X-ray digitizers, our high-end equipment enables our scanning staff to do your work quickly and accurately.
  • For mammography scanning, we use the VIDAR DiagnosticPRO™ Advantage X-ray film digitizer. This digitzer has achieved the highest reliability, image quality, consistency, and best overall

• The software that we use is Vidar’s ClinicalExpress, designed for ease of operation and specifically for use with the world’s Vidar’s leading line of film digitizers. This software complies with the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) 3.0 standard to digitize relevant prior films and send the images to DICOM PACS or workstations, so you’re assured that your X-ray scans are fully compliant. The software handles general Modalities and it also handles Mammogram scanning, and it directly supports hanging protocols.
• Because we’re sticklers for perfection, in addition to the Vidar softwarer, we also use our own front end GATEWAY, which we wrote and is part of our Radiology Services Online. This software allows us to accept RIS patient data dumps (such as an XLS file) and extract what we need — for example, the patient name, study date, Modality, ascension number — and turn this into a Modality worklist file – *.MWL. We do the work, so you don’t have to.
• We’re also sticklers for efficiency, so we also wrote second software that is a back end to GATEWAY, which allows up to a dozen film digitizers to run at full speed on the same network onto a DICOM server. These raw DICOM images are converted into real DICOM study files, and then our GATEWAY writes this simultaneously in up to three different file formats such as DICOM, JPEG, and multipage PDF. Our expertise turns your X-ray film into digital files FAST!

Advantages of Going Digital with your X-Rays

Nearly all types of radiological practices benefit from going digital, including small radiology and ultrasound clinics, large hospitals and medical centers, as well as mobile medical practices. Some of the advantages that our customers have reported are:

• Streamlined work flow
• Easier, faster access to all X-ray images
• Reduced file storage requirements
• Reduced operational costs
• Better patient outcomes
• Easier monitoring of HIPAA requirements

About Our X-Ray Scanning Process

Whether you’re scanning your X-rays or just disposing of outdated film, you do need to follow EPA regulations for disposing. While you they’re not needed anymore, they can be difficult to dispose of for a couple of reasons:

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (or HIPAA) classifies X-ray film as private documents, since it contains patient information, so care must be taken with patient’s private data.
• The film needs to be disposed of in accordance with Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. X-Rayscan.com turns what could be a painful process into an easy one with our one-stop shop service.

How X-ray Recycling Works

When your send your X-ray film to us for scanning and recycling, you will need to load the film, and any envelopes or containers the film is stored in, into a boxes. Shipping is arranged dependent upon the number of boxes. We separate out the X-rays from other accompanying documents, such as paper envelopes. To protect the patient’s privacy, these accompanying documents are shredded, then recycled.

Next, the X-ray film is scanned and converted into the type of files that you have requested. The digital files are delivered to you in the format and manner you required.

After the X-rays are digitized, we send them to one of our partner recyclers, where they are fed into a grinder and dived into smaller pieces, which renders the film unreadable. No one can put those small pieces back together, to view the X-ray. The diced X-ray film is then washed to recover the silver from the X-ray and protect the environment. The X-ray film is separated into silver and plastic, and the plastic components are sent to recycling. The silver is further extracted, purified, and finally sent to a silver vendor.

How Much Silver is Extracted from the Films? How Much is it Worth?

If you have 100,000 pieces of full size 14 x 17″ medical film to recycle, that would equal about 8333 pounds of film. Silver is priced by Troy weight and the cost per Troy ounce varies daily. Going rates are about $.20 per pound in jackets or $.39 a pound for film only. So 100,000 pieces of film equals to about 8333 pounds of film – based on $.39 per pound, this entire job would refund a total of $3,250

That’s it – a little over $3,000 would be refunded, for all 100,000 films.

Safe Handing of X-ray Film

When preparing X-ray film scanning and recycling, we recommend the following:

• Carefully place all of the X-ray films and other documents into a large box for transport. Do not separate out any of the materials that go with the X-rays, since these may also need to be disposed of according to HIPAA regulations.
• When handling the X-ray film, hold by the edges to limit your exposure to the chemicals and metals on the film. Better yet, wear latex gloves while handling the X-ray film.
• Wash your hands when you finish handling the X-ray film, because the film contains silver halide, which is toxic.

When you allow X-Rayscan.com to handle all of your X-ray film digitizing and X-ray film recycling, you eliminate the HIPAA and EPA concerns while streamlining your work. Contact us today for more information.