BATON ROUGE — Former LSU quarterback Jamie Howard has donated a dry laser camera, valued at $45,000, to the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital and Clinics, the University announced on Wednesday.
The AGFA Drystar 3000 donated by Howard will replace the current matrix camera used in the veterinary teaching hospital. The new laser camera offers the advantage of producing final images directly from an ultrasound by using a laser to transfer digital data onto film, excluding the development stage.
Because the laser light beam is more focused, the image is much clearer than one produced with a standard light source.
“One of the biggest problems with teaching ultrasound has always been the vast difference between the image on the screen and the quality of still pictures taken from freeze frames. This technology makes the recorded image almost as good as the original image so that the teaching of diagnostic ultrasound will be greatly enhanced, and images for our records and publications will be much better,” explained Dr. David Senior, department head of veterinary clinical sciences.
In addition to using the camera on future ultrasound procedures, the clinicians in the teaching hospital will reproduce images from past cases.
According to Dr. Beth Partington, clinical associate professor of veterinary clinical sciences, “This will improve patient care because the attending veterinarian will be able to look at the hard copy from a case and have a much better idea of what the radiologist saw at the time the patient was examined. It will improve teaching for the same reason because slides used for lectures will be of much higher quality.”
Howard was LSU’s starting quarterback during his senior year in 1995 and ranks third in LSU history for 6,158 career passing yards. He is managing partner of COL Imaging Centers and manages the Imaging Center of Louisiana and the Open Air MRI of Lafayette and Lake Charles. Over the past two years he has also done imaging work for LSU athletics.
“This new camera is a perfect fit for the Vet School because it will work great with the school’s new ultrasound machine. I’m happy we were able to do something like this for LSU and hope it will be a benefit,” Howard said.