SIIM 2006

Medical imaging storage solutions need to work smarter and faster, to meet the rapidly expanding needs of high-volume radiology departments. That’s the assessment of Robert Cecil, network director of radiology and cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic.

A status update and news of the latest initiative launched by the Transforming the Radiological Interpretation Process drew a near capacity crowd on Saturday, at the final session of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine meeting. TRIP's mission is to identify more efficient ways for imaging informatics to deliver high-quality healthcare.

Hospitals typically add or upgrade scanners to their radiology departments without considering how the new equipment will affect PACS performance. Some administrators argue that there is no other way to do it. But Sergio Camorlinga, Ph.D., research and development manager of TRLabs in Winnipeg, Canada, may have found a better way.

Radiologists are failing to receive adequate clinical information about patients that could affect diagnostic decision-making, according to a survey presented Friday at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine meeting.

A prototype system created by Canadian researchers uses data mining algorithms to automatically search, identify, and retrieve clinically relevant cases when studies are opened in a PACS.

Introducing motion into the display of static images could improve detection performance and efficiency, according to a paper presented Friday at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine meeting.

Signal-to-noise ratio has long been the standard for gauging the performance of MR scanners. Its calculation, however, can be tedious, especially when several scanners are involved.

Digital image workstations have progressed rapidly since first introduced to radiology more than 25 years ago, but they have yet to achieve the intuitive ease of use that characterized the light boxes they replaced, said presenters at an educational session on Saturday.

Virtual colonoscopy has much to recommend it, including charges about half of those for optical colonoscopy. But it faces significant hurdles before it becomes a major part of the nation’s colon cancer screening program, presenters said during an educational session Friday.

Off-the-shelf LCDs do just as well at presenting medical images and cost a fraction of the price monitors marketed specifically for medical display command, according to preliminary results presented April 27 at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine annual meeting in Austin.

Of the $120 billion spent on healthcare in the U.S. annually, about 10% to 20% is wasted on inappropriate treatment. What if some of those funds were invested in enterprise information systems? Imagine the possibility of routinely using such systems to identify trends in medical imaging procedures and highlight potential errors, inaccuracies, and waste.

The typical CT exam exposes patients to the equivalent of between 100 and 250 chest x-rays. This fact escapes most physicians, including radiologists, according to Dianna D. Cody, Ph.D., chief of radiologic physics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The burgeoning field of PACS administration will have its own certification and testing program under an initiative announced Thursday by the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (formerly SCAR).

Effective immediately, the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology (SCAR) is changing its name to the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM). The society also announced today that it will relocate to a new headquarters in Leesburg, VA, this summer.

Declaring that “computers are no more intelligent than a wooden pencil,” a keynote speaker at the Society for Imaging Informatics and Medicine meeting outlined how medicine can draw intelligence out of large, increasingly complex digital data sets.

Radiology is no neophyte when it comes to information technology. Viewing, managing, and storing digital images has made IT a necessity for the specialty, one of the earliest adopters of data management tools. But lately, radiology has lost ground to other specialties that have successfully implemented image management techniques pioneered by radiology PACS. On a parallel track, the electronic health record has also picked up speed.

The theme of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology 2006 meeting is "Imaging Informatics in Focus." The meeting promises to highlight a broad range of imaging topics of interest to physicians, scientists, technologists, IT specialists, and administrators representing radiology as well as other clinical specialties.