By Mitch Furman, senior product manager, Professional Graphics at AMD

Back in February I wrote about AMD’s work with Barco’s medical imaging division to bring AMD Eyefinity technology to its customer base through Barco’s MXRT Series display controller products.  This technology, combined with AMD FirePro™ professional graphics, allows clinicians working with MRI, CT and Mammography medical imaging systems to view data and images across multiple windows at the same time, improving efficiency and accuracy, and helping deliver better care for patients.

There’s no question that this technology will have a significant impact on medical imaging and diagnostics.  After all, doctors rely on superior graphics to provide accurate diagnoses and see just what’s going on with a patient.  Yet more often than not, budget constraints and product certification prevent IT upgrades in the medical community from happening as quickly as they do for consumers – your doctor can’t always run out to their local electronics retailer!  As a result, technology lifecycles are prolonged and can prevent healthcare providers from the opportunity to take advantage of the best-available image solutions.

To this end, AMD and Barco are working together to help address the healthcare community’s IT mandates, whether it be prolonging the life of older technology, or undertaking a redesign of existing graphics cards in response to customer requests. The bottom line – we are committed to providing the best visual experience possible for the radiological community. With the recent launch of the MXRT-5450 from Barco, based on the AMD FirePro™ V5800 DVI professional graphics card, we’ve proved this, and we’re helping healthcare professionals better serve their patients.

How do we know?

Simple – we implemented a redesign of our hardware to address feedback from Barco’s customers – who, quite frankly, are our customers as well. They let us know they need flexible technology that can deliver superior imaging within their IT environment.

During a conversation I had with my Barco counterpart, Becky Kiichle, product manager of display controllers, she said:  “What could we do to maximize current technology and deliver a rich graphics experience for our current displays?  The answer is learning where the bottlenecks are and eliminating them. This means reducing dependency on dongles which can cause connectivity confusion and add cost.  We needed to offer a solution with two Dual-link DVI outputs to help prolong product lifecycles and protect the diagnostic display investments of our customers, while delivering the power and flexibility of AMD FirePro GPUs to generate outstanding images.  Basically, medical professionals need something with simple connectivity and a long lifecycle that is reliable and powerful, and we delivered with Barco’s MXRT-5450.”

While this advancement is a realization of AMD and Barco’s dedication to addressing customer needs with new products, the real value of course is the ability to improve healthcare with a streamlined, powerful product. The MXRT-5450 means that medical diagnosticians have access to technology that delivers exceptional color and clarity along with superior resolution quality, all designed to enable more accurate diagnoses in the long run.

Mitch Furman is a senior product manager, Professional Graphics at AMD.  His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.  Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.