by by Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 11/98) - A cartoon on the door depicts several cats gazing at a patient on a stretcher.

This must be the CAT-scan room.

And inside, X-ray department technical supervisor Dale Murphy-Boutilier is cleaning up after using the C-arm, which allows for real-time displays of X-ray images on a television screen.

"This way a surgeon can watch what he's doing," she says as she takes off her radiation-proof coat. "There's another screen back there so someone else can watch, too."

Stanton has three X-ray machines for general work, one mammography machine from the late 1970s and two mobile units.

"It's hard to keep up with changes in X-ray," she says. "We got a new ultrasound machine in November and we'll be getting a new mammography machine in the summer."

A Yellowknifer for seven years, the 42-year-old Murphy-Boutilier formerly worked as a nurse's aide at Guelph General Hospital. But full-time nights prompted her to look elsewhere.

Now on day shift, she supervises 13 staff and sometimes pulls weekend shifts too. There is always someone on call.

When not working, she enjoys travelling with husband Arthur. Otherwise, she has a passion for photography.

And isn't X-ray just another form of photography?

"It involves photography, yes. But we don't produce a hard copy print like you do."

Handling a film-filled cassette which looks more like a thin-spined atlas, Murphy-Boutilier inserts the device into the slit of another large machine.

To create the image, a shot of radiation would penetrate the body part and the cassette. Then, florescent sides inside the cassette light up to burn the image onto the film.

The machine takes the place of a darkroom, and only takes 90 seconds to spew out a negative-like finished product.

Cassettes come in several different sizes up to 35 centimetres by 43 centimetres. Still, as Murphy-Boutilier passes by a posted image of a sumo wrestler, she explains how "people are getting bigger and it's harder to fit them all on one cassette. Sometimes we have to piece two or three together."