RSNA

Agfa is taking image management to the next level of performance with its release of the latest Impax ES (enterprise suite) at the RSNA meeting, according to company executives. Impax Web1000 5.0 ES features a Data Currency capability that improves communications by continually synchronizing information from the Impax Server to the Web1000. This translates into faster log-ins and image display speeds, as well as greater memory. Conference mode allows authorized users to work interactively.

Synapse version 3.1 from Fujifilm Medical Systems USA features advances in data processing and presentation, extended dictation support, and DICOM query and retrieve functionality. Interaction with PACS made by other vendors is one of the highlights of the new software.

Researchers in Germany believe that MR imaging should be included among the World Health Organization’s options for diagnosing sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), which is associated with exposure to mad cow disease.

TeraRecon is promising distributed, user-friendly 3D applications through its AquariusNET 1.5, showcased at the RSNA meeting in Chicago. The enhanced image processing server is designed to work in concert with PACS.

After years of citing soft indicators like improved efficiency, some institutions can now present hard numbers to cost-justify installing a PACS. Two papers presented Thursday indicate both large cost savings and rapid return on investment with PACS implementation.

Toshiba America Medical Systems is showing its new Kalare digital x-ray system for the first time at an RSNA meeting. Designed to enhance productivity and clinical outcomes, the system will be offered at a value-oriented price, according Don Volz, director of the x-ray business unit for Toshiba.

Siemens Medical Solutions has introduced its Moblitt XP Digital, a mobile digital x-ray system with a flat-panel detector. The product offers instant image display to enhance both productivity and workflow and a fast archiving capability for speedy processing.

Philips Medical Systems has been showing its flagship DigitalDiagnost VM digital radiography system as a marketable product at the RSNA meeting all week. The system, which appeared at last year’s meeting as a work-in-progress, began shipping in June.

Digital mammography’s latest vendor, Siemens Medical Solutions, is showing its new Mammomat Novation system on the 2004 RSNA exhibit floor. The product meets all the demands of modern mammography practices, providing digital screening, diagnosis, and stereotactic biopsy capabilities. Since receiving FDA approval in August, Novation has been installed at 10 sites, and the company expects to install another 20 by year-end.

Tuesday morning, after Dr. David Levin and Dr. Alan Kaye’s course on self-referral in imaging, someone was handing out a press statement as attendees walked out the door. The title, “Patients belong in the imaging picture,” is profound. I agree, and groceries belong in the grocery store. I cannot think of a single imaging study I have ever done that would have been more useful had the patient not been in the study.

With the help of diffusion-weighted imaging, spectroscopy, and directionally encoded color maps, MR is advancing understanding of hippocampal abnormalities in patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

Digital radiography has more than arrived. It is overwhelming film-based systems. And GE Healthcare has the proof, announcing at the RSNA meeting the 4000th shipment of its Revolution digital x-ray detector-based system.

Interventional radiologists can now see liver tumors freezing in real-time on MR imaging as they perform thermal ablation, according to Harvard researchers.

Hospitals that archive digital mammograms in their PACS must plan for network modifications to handle the transfer of very large data sets and prepare for significantly increased archival storage requirements.

It’s been awhile since the imaging community paid much attention to open MR. But several products being exhibited this week at the RSNA meeting could perk up interest.