Lois Wingerson

Will we still be using mammography for breast cancer screening one fourth of the way through this century? That was the question posed in one session at ECR 2011, and speaker Christine Kuhl said she greatly fears that we actually may.

Final results of the prospective French CIRTACI trial are in: contrast media for diagnostic imaging are very safe in general, as long as radiologists are vigilant for patients with allergies, asthma, or previous reactions to contrast agents. The vast majority are more itchy than serious.

PET hybrid technologies are already hot, and two innovations discussed during the final session of ECR 2011 are aimed at making them more even powerful and efficient.

Will we still be using mammography for breast cancer screening one fourth of the way through this century? That was the question posed in one session at ECR 2011, and speaker Christine Kuhl said she greatly fears that we actually may.

Just this month, cardiovascular surgeons and diagnostic radiologists collaborated to publish an article showing that CT is much better than ultrasound at measuring the diameter of the aortic annulus - an important matter when deciding which size of valve to implant transcutaneously. This could both dishearten and encourage radiologist Rodrigo Salgado of Antwerp University Hospital, who says CT is best for measuring the annulus, and that isn't circular, doesn’t have a radius, and in fact actually doesn't exist.

Functional MRI studies involving the precuneus, a region in the posterior of the brain, reveal what may be a new way to distinguish patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from those with Alzheimer’s disease.

Last week, exactly 25 years after the first "high-field" (1.5 T) MRI scanner was introduced, radiologists gathered at an ECR 2011 session in Vienna, Austria, to ponder what its chairman called "higher and higher field magnets."

For spotting the tiniest metastases inside the liver, MRI with the liver-specific gadolinium-based contrast agent Primovist (gadoxetic acid) was far and away the top choice of surgeons in an eight-country multicenter study. The surgeons were given a chance to use various imaging methods for colorectal center patients and judge their value. The same contrast agent is also proving adept at visualizing obstructions in biliary vasculature, compared to non-contrast-enhanced MRI.

Refinements in MRI technique continue to show promise in clarifying the nature and extent of damage of myocardial infarction. Take for example teams from Munich, Germany presenting this week at ECR 2011, who have been finding ways around the problem of adapting inversion time to the individual patient when using delayed enhancement to detect tissue damage.

Five years after the first reports linking gadolinium-based MRI contrast agents to nephrogenic system fibrosis (NSF), separate presentations of post-marketing data from manufacturers and an independent prospective study supported by agencies in France have validated the low-risk status of the contrast agent Dotarem (Gd-DOTA).

Organizers for this year's congress have worked to increase audience and speaker interaction and discussion.

It's been a mere eight years since the blurry spots called ground glass opacities (GGOs) that appeared on spiral CTs were first linked to cancer. Already, the first hints are emerging of what they may actually mean to malignant transformation.