RSNA meeting attendees can expect health services scientific sessions to focus on quality, according to the committee chair. The sessions will define quality and how radiologists can work on the entire care experience.

Developers of CT scanners have been trying to adapt their technology to breast imaging for decades. They have drawn a step closer, thanks to the efforts of researchers at the University of California, Davis. Their efforts may lead to the ability to not only visualize but treat breast cancer.

Partners Healthcare System in Boston has boosted CT contrast safety and saved money through a unique program that integrates contrast policies into the six-hospital system’s electronic medical records system, according to a new report.

Medication errors may arise less often in a busy hospital radiology department than in other inpatient services, but they can cause more serious damage when they do happen. Radiologists at Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center came to these conclusions after evaluating 27 months of high-tech medical imaging experience. They used their data to identify the causes of errors and devise strategies to address them.

Dose reduction will be among Siemens’ key messages at the RSNA meeting this year. Driving home this message will be IRIS (iterative reconstruction in image space), a proprietary algorithm that processes raw data acquired by CTs, according to André Hartung, Siemens vice president, CT Marketing and Sales.

With years of slice wars behind them, vendors will argue that image quality and dose reduction are this year’s dominant issues in CT. Most of their arguments will be rooted in past developments.

Based on on a database with more than 100,000 submitted cases, modifications to the international system for staging non-small cell lung cancer promise to more closely reflect the connection between disease progression and the patient's prospects for survival.

The new generation of wide CT detectors provides expanded coverage, allowing faster scans and even dynamic imaging of organs, including heart and brain. There are disadvantages, said Dr. Mathias Prokop, speaking May 19 at the 11th International Symposium on Multidetector Row CT, but these are minor in comparison.

A smorgasbord of challenges face radiology but few present a greater threat than the “invisible radiologist,” said Dr. Gary Glazer, chairman of the Stanford University radiology department, who kicked off the 11th International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT.

As with any competition, the value of the Workstation Face-Off at this year’s International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT will reveal itself during the course of the event.

Over the past quarter century, exposure to ionizing radiation from medical procedures in the U.S. has grown sevenfold, according to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. CT is a major source.

In the boom leading up to sequencing of the human genome, genetics and legal experts debated the ownership of the data contained within the double helix. Now, as the U.S. readies for a surge into healthcare IT, a similar debate has broken out over EMRs. The outcome could be critical to making the best use of the huge amount of electronic medical information that the Obama Administration’s stimulus funding will create in the next few years.

Time is running out on Medicare, said economist Alan Greenspan in a keynote address to a capacity crowd at HIMSS09. Nearly 7000 attendees of the conference heard the former Fed Chairman explain how political expediency going back more than two decades ago led to the present-day inadequately funded federal healthcare program. Greenspan tagged healthcare IT as a possible means for getting out of this trouble.

The debate over “meaningful use” has begun. At stake is nothing less than the success of President Obama’s initiative to turn paper into electronic medical records.

There’s no more natural way to convey information than speech and arguably no more difficult interface or a computer to capture. Agfa has come up with a couple new twists to help. Viztek takes a swing at tighter integration between PACS and EMRs, while IT specialists include first responders in the chain of medical communications and refine ways for providers to keep on top of their financials.

The makers of electronic medical records have never been happier. For the first time, their technologies are glitzier than MRs and CTs. The federal government is gearing up to reimburse the use of HIT products with an entitlement program that will award fees similar to those given the users of high tech medical scanners. And the result could be an enormous boon to the adoption and use of healthcare IT. But as vendors get ready to slide new servers and archives into place, are they also unwittingly laying the plans for a trap door that will lead medical practice down a path no one would consciously choose?

The road to profit goes through a tiny burg called accuracy, which is sometimes harder to find than it should be. Vendors on the HIMSS09 exhibit floor offered their own kinds of medical GPS, some using off-the-shelf technologies spun up with a proprietary brand of software, others offering home brewed data handling techniques.

RIS and PACS vendors saw it coming a long time ago, a need to make data repositories work with IT the systems that drive workflow. The hybridization of RIS and PACS, preceded by interfaces that allowed the transfer of data between and among systems by different vendors, blazed a trail toward interoperability. This trail has now fanning out to super highway status to accommodate the spread of companies seeking to provide answers to IT questions that must be answered if the Obama initiative is to improve the efficiency of U.S. healthcare.

The HIMSS 09 exhibit floor opened Sunday as thousands of IT enthusiasts descended on McCormick Place in Chicago. Mammoth exhibit halls packed in November with imaging equipment played host to myriad information technologies, some focused on the core of healthcare IT – switching, translating and archiving packets of data; others addressing the consequences of IT adoption.

Radiologists should be clinically focused when handling HIV cases, according to a leading chest expert. They must know if patients are drug-naïve or whether they are already on antiretroviral therapy. It is also important to determine how they acquired their HIV, whether onset is acute or more gradual, and how profoundly unwell the patients feel.