Best Laptop for viewing DICOMs

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RadDVM

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I was hoping I could get your opinions about which new MacBook Pro would suite a radiology resident best. I just matched to a veterinary diagnostic imaging residency this year and I am contemplating buying a new MacBook Pro. I am having a hard time deciding if spending the extra money on the 15" Pro makes sense. Let's start with the pros: 1. It has a larger screen (maybe better to view studies on) 2. It has a better graphic set up because there is RAM that is dedicated to running the graphics, 3. It has a quad-core processor as opposed to a dual-core processor that is in the 13" Pros. Now for the cons: 1. It is about a grand more for similar models and as a veterinary resident I'm not going to be pulling down a ton of cash.
As for what I plan to do on it: I will be on call every 3rd week meaning that I need to have something to look at images on if I am not at home (I have a Mac Desktop at home). I also will be using it to store digital copies of texts on as well as reading journal articles.
If anyone has any personal experience with either of the MacBook Pros and wouldn't mind sharing some advice that would be great.

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Hi RadDVM, I have both a 13" (2013; no dedicated GPU) and now a 15" (2015; AMD Radeon R9 M370X). I'm selling the 13" on Craigslist. My advice: Get the 15" - it's a noticeable difference in productivity. Not so much in viewing a single image, but in having multiple images/windows open at the same time. The dedicated GPU provides a tremendous improvement in graphics performance. Viewing 2D DICOM slices doesn't rely on the GPU, but if you plan on rendering any 3D models it's a no-brainer.

I'd also recommend getting the 2015 15" MacBook Pro with R9 M370X GPU; the exact model I have. A little known fact about this model is that it supports 5K using both of its DisplayPorts at the same time; Apple is advertising its 2016 models as the first laptops to support 5K, which isn't true. You can't use Apple's LG 5K monitor because they purposefully designed it only to work with the 2016 MacBook Pro, but you can use the Dell UP2715K with the 2015 MacBook Pro. You could buy a top-of-the-line 2015 MacBook Pro on Craigslist for $1700-$2000 (no tax!). Bottom-line: Get the 15" for the GPU and the screen size, they are both well worth it.

Note that MacBooks have AMD GPUs...so you can't use Nvidia CUDA if you plan on doing machine learning.
 
15" is a big laptop to lug around in your bag. Nothing about viewing images needs a dedicated video card, although they are nice. Biggest factor is probably the screen resolution. Get the retina resolution screen, whatever else probably doesn't matter.

Since most of us on this forum are probably people radiologists, would you mind a quick question: what kind of images do you mostly look at? radiographs? any CT or MR?
 
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Thanks for the all the advice. It has been really helpful.
We look at images from all types of modalities. I would say that probably 40% of what we look at is radiographs. We look at a lot of plain digital radiographs, but we also do quite a bit of GI barium studies and in horses we do some contrast arthrography. We do some fluoroscopy (in an academic institutions, probably >5% of the caseload), most of it is interventional (cardio and intra-op for fracture fixations), but we also do some contrast urethrography studies. The other 55% of the caseload is split between CT, MRI, and ultrasound. U/S takes up about 25-30% and most of it is abdominal, we do some musculoskeletal in small animal but not as much as we do in horses. The institution that I am at does more CT than MRI because we use it for radiation-therapy planning, so I would say our caseload splits to about 20% CT and 10% MRI. CT gets utilized for RT planning, emergency trauma cases, lymphangiograms, portal/arteriograms for shunt hunts, and ureterograms. The MRI is mostly used for looking at neurologic cases. We also do a number of nuclear scintigraphy cases. In my institution, we do mostly equine bone scans, looking for causes of lameness. The coolest part about veterinary radiology, to me, is the variety of species we get to image. We image everything from snakes, birds, and ferrets, to dogs/cats, up to horses and cattle. As far as what residents are expected to be competent at... all imaging in the domestic species (cats, dogs, horses, and farm animals) but we get a fair amount of experience in looking at birds and pocket pets.
A summarized breakdown of the cases at my institution, most days would be:
50 cases
30ish radiographs (large, small animal, exotic)
8-9 U/S cases
8 CTs
3MRIs
+/-1 fluoroscopy case
Rarely nuc. med study
 
what do your reports look like?

Bone scan
Species: horse
Indication: lameness

I ask because I remember seeing a chiropractic radiology report once and it was weird.
 
Our reports are set-up pretty straight forward and standard. We basically have a Findings and Conclusion section. In the findings we just list what we found (self-explanatory). For bone scans we discuss areas of increased radiopharmaceutical uptake in the limb(s). Then in the conclusion section we summarize on the findings, offer possible reasons/disease processes that would cause the finding and lastly suggest further test(s) or sometimes, rarely for lameness exams, treatment.s
 
The reason I was asking is screen size/resolution makes more of a difference for radiographs than CT/MR. Plus I was just curious. Thanks for the awesome answers.

To be honest, it sounds a lot like people radiology, without the species variation. Peds can seem like another species though...
 
A resolution of 2048-1536 if i remembered correctly is enough for digital radiograph thats not mammo.

I don't know if you are a gamer or not, but gaming laptops usually are good for this.

I personally use a razer blade laptop, and it works out well for me due to its great screen. In general, you want to shop for a laptop that has a good IPS screen, ideally with 32 bit color reproduction.

The best things you can get are actually PACS workstation monitors. Some of those are being sold pretty cheaply on ebay.
 
Thanks for the advice. It really is a lot like human radiology, a lot of what we do is taken from human medicine. I bet Peds is an entire different beast, it even is vet med.

As far as monitors goes... the new MacBook Pros can run a 5k screen, so is there any benefit in getting a 5K screen over a 4K screen?
 
Unless you will have a separate screen, i recommend you get a laptop that is retina or have above 2048-1536 resolution. You don't need anything above that to display anything other than mammography I think. For human that is
 
Sounds great, thanks for the advice!
 
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