INDIANAPOLIS — Have you ever wanted a second opinion for your dog or cat when visiting the vet but don’t want to drive all over town? Now, you can get your four-legged friend a virtual second opinion without leaving the vet’s office, and it’s free of charge.
“When we do radiographs, which is often, it's nice to have a second set of eyes,” said Dr. Kerry Peterson about Pet Wellness Clinics’ new X-ray procedure.
Pet Wellness Clinics has partnered with SignalPET in San Diego to offer advanced veterinary technology powered by artificial intelligence.
Pet Wellness Clinics is the first veterinary group in Indiana providing this technology to its furry patients.
“It’s a software that has 50 radiographic markers and is able to pick up abnormalities,” Peterson said. “Virtually, every single radiograph we take on this machine will be sent to that software and within 10 minutes. We get a report, and we're able to base our findings off of their findings. We sometimes miss things, so it's nice to have that backup set of eyes.”
The creators of the SignalPET technology said veterinarians benefit from increased confidence in assessing each radiograph. The technology automatically examines the entire pet, helping vets confirm nothing has been overlooked.
“What it is providing them is actually a second set of eyes on the radiographs,” said SignalPET co-founder and COO Mike Dolinka. “It’s confirmation — a complete review of what actually is being found by the machine-learning algorithm.”
Plus, the pet owners have a printed report made available to them, as well as access to their pet's X-rays.
“One thing that I like about it is if a dog comes in for coughing, we're going to take radiographs of its chest,” Dr. Peterson said. “What this service does is it will pick up on things in the animals — not just targeting the chest. So anything else that's in that radiograph, if there's an abnormal finding, it'll pick up on it. I've been able to see arthritis and some other incidental changes in some of the radiographs that I may have missed because I was too focused on what I was taking a radiograph on. So it really offers us a lot of relief knowing that we have this technology to help us.”