When you're hurt, have a heart attack or stroke, time is crucial. With certain conditions minutes can literally mean the difference between life and death.

One of the greatest technologies in the last decade is making diagnosis and treatment much easier for doctors and patients.

Helen Baker from Elkhart had a broken ankle several years ago and has been having a lot of pain, so she came to St. Joseph Regional Medical Center to see if she had broken her foot again.

What's different this time is the swiftness in which Helen will find out.

“In radiology we have digital plates now and instead of the technologist running the film or running a cassette they can see an image immediately after it’s taken,” St. Joseph Regional Medical Center Director of Digital Imaging Dave Hofstra said.

This digital detector is so portable Helen won't have to move from the bed she checked into.

Laura Weaver has worked as a radiology technician for 27 years and says the changes over the years are mind boggling.

“Totally reinvented the whole x-ray procedure. I mean we don't have to sit around and wait for our images to develop, we have digital images, so in three seconds you see what you need to do to make the image better,” St. Joseph Regional Medical Center Radiology Technician Laura Weaver said.

Less than five minutes later Helen is wheeled back to her room and in the emergency room Dr. Mark Kricheff is able to read the results immediately rather than waiting for film to be developed.

“Before she even got back I was able to pull up her x-ray up,” Dr. Mark Kricheff said.

Since the radiologist also has immediate access to the images from his office, Helen will get her diagnosis almost immediately.

In Helen’s case, the speed of diagnosis, while convenient, is not a matter of life and death, but Dr. Kricheff says with stroke and heart attack patients the technology can make all the difference.

“So in the old days it could be dozens of minutes before we'd get a result and now it's literally within, sometimes seconds, of when the patient has the images done and the radiologists are alerted that his is an urgent case,” Dr. Kricheff said.

Dr. Kricheff says that this technology is lifesaving

What about Helen?

“All right Miss Baker, good news. Nothing's broken on your ankles,” Dr. Kricheff said.

Helen's problem is arthritis, so she'll go home with a prescription and a recommendation to see someone at the medical center's foot clinic.

For the rest of us, no matter what the problem, digital radiology is a prescription for faster diagnosis and treatment.

Digital x-rays also cut down on errors that were possible with paper files. Since the images are no longer held in a single location patients can have their x-rays on a compact disk to take to another doctor or hospital.

The technology is now available in most hospitals and will make x-rays on film obsolete in the next few years.