Film and PACS: friends or foes?

Ten years of PACS experience have demonstrated that PACS needs film and film needs PACS in order to fulfil all the requirements of a modern radiological department. The paper analyses the major technological and functional differences between film and PACS in order to derive a new PACS paradigm which combines the strengths of both film and electronic imaging. A practical implementation of the FilmPACS concept in an ultrasound department is briefly described.