By Max Street
Signify Research’s latest General Radiography and Fluoroscopy market report reported a minor revenue decline of -0.9% for digital radiography systems in 2023, with a return to growth of 6.5% forecast in 2024.
Healthcare facilities faced strong economic pressures globally in 2023, resulting in a shift in product preference from high-end digital radiography (DR) units to low and midrange systems. Inflationary pressures also led to subdued spending across many mature markets in 2023. Radiography system revenues were further hampered by the market decline in China, due to the anti-corruption investigations, which has resulted in postponed system purchases to 2024. The fulfilment of pent-up demand in China, in addition to increased demand for digitalisation in emerging markets and large DR tenders in Turkey and Italy, will contribute to a projected global revenue growth of 5.3% for digital radiography systems in 2024.
AI unlocks new use cases for radiography equipment
Since the 2023 edition of Signify Research's report, significant AI developments have occurred in the X-ray market. Examples include the commencement of AI-assisted lung cancer screening in Taiwan with Lunit’s CXR INSIGHT and the commercialisation of new radiography bone densitometry solutions from Ibex Innovations, and 16 Bit in EMEA and North America, respectively. These AI developments facilitate new use cases for general radiography equipment and hold the potential to replace CT and DEXA for lung cancer or osteoporosis screening or prescreening. Positive results from ongoing studies of X-ray in these applications could drive rapid proliferation of X-ray equipment. This is particularly true for implementing X-ray as a mobile, low-budget alternative to CT scans for lung cancer screening in low-income countries and rural populations.
Trials have also begun for the application of KA Imaging’s single-exposure dual-energy technology in Taiwan’s lung cancer screening programme, which enables the differentiation of soft and hard tissue. KA Imaging also entered a partnership with UMG/DEL Medical to bring two dual-energy-capable mobile DR systems to market in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, the technology comes with a high price premium, which limits its adoption. However, it is gaining momentum, highlighted by Neusoft’s recent announcement of the development of the NeuVision 560M and 580M mobile DR systems with spectral functionalities.
