Oregon Brain Injury Lawyer Aaron DeShaw:
Our Portland brain injury law firm has handled traumatic brain injury cases successfully for over 20 years. Rather than simply advertising for brain injury cases, we have spent decades studying brain injuries, and how to handle traumatic brain injury legal cases.
Handling traumatic brain injury cases correctly in Oregon and Washington, where jurors are more critical about claims and the value of personal injury cases, requires a high degree of competence in handling brain injury claims. And with a high level of competence, and recognition for excellence within the legal profession comes respect from mediators, arbitrators and judges.
Not only do you have to find an Oregon or Washington personal injury lawyer competent and respected in the field of traumatic brain injury cases, but also a lawyer who is willing to pay money on your case to thoroughly investigate it with radiology evaluations and expert witnesses.
Changes in Imaging
One of the most exciting things that's happening in traumatic brain injury legal cases right now is the improvements of brain imaging. It's important for people to understand that there are three different varieties of MRI studies. Low resolution open MRIs, standard definition closed MRIs, and high definition MRI machines. This is critically important in brain injury cases, because it is important to look at MRI's taken in the highest definition. Click here if you are interested in a full video on this topic.
Viewing the imaging with DICOM Files
Over the past two decades handling brain injury cases, many things have changed. One of the most notable is that the medical profession has moved from storing medical imaging on physical films to storing it in digital files. Advanced medical imaging has standardized in the form of a "DICOM" file, which contains all of the information obtained by the hospital, radiology facility or clinic. Radiographs from x-rays have also moved to being digital, and transferrable in a digital file.
When our clients have positive imaging, we look at the original imaging files
One of the unique things our Portland personal injury lawyers do, is that in addition to getting the radiologists report (which rarely has pictures of the client's injuries in the report) we obtain the images from the radiologist in the DICOM format. We upload the data into a medical radiology program and can review the images ourselves in order to see what the traumatic brain injury looks like in our own clients. Providing the insurance company with pictures from the radiology file, objectively demonstrating the injuries discussed in the chart notes of the doctors, helps the insurer provide a better settlement offer in a personal injury claim.
3D imaging of Injuries, 3D Models, Injury Medical Illustrations, and Surgery Animations
When the case warrants further investigation, we retain a radiology expert witness to reconstruct our client's medical imaging in 3D, which allows us to look at what's occurring in our client's cases from every angle. This has proven very important in cases involving a traumatic sternum fracture with a traumatic heart injury, or in a case involving multiple fractures in the C1 and C2 vertebra. These 3D digital imaging studies can then be used to create a 3D model of the client's injuries so that the judge and jury can better understand the physical part of our client's injuries. In other cases, we hire leading medical illustration and animation companies to provide the insurance company and jury an easy to understand graphic of our client's injury or surgery.
Different types of injuries require different methods of medical imaging
When we obtain a forensic radiology evaluation of a client, we try to work with the best local or national radiologists that use the best technology to demonstrate our client's injuries. As discussed in this video on imaging in brain injury cases, we may look at CT studies, MRI studies, diffusion tensor imaging, magnetoencephalography, SPECT, PET or other imaging to best understand our client's injuries. We bring all these things together, and we can see the best picture of what's happening with our clients.
If you are seeking a lawyer to handle your brain injury case, please visit our contact page on this web site, or call our office at (503) 227-1233 for a free consultation.