Radiology reporting on the GE Healthcare Centricity RIS just got smarter with an intelligent algorithm that senses when dictated cases don’t sound right. This “thought checker,” scheduled to begin routine shipment by the end of this year as an upgrade to the Centricity RIS-IC Reporting module, uses the context of reports to identify possible errors. The program, for example, might question whether the radiologist meant “left occipital lobe” rather than “right” by highlighting the directional term in blue. Or it might insert a red bar at a point where certain information needs to be added.

Brit Systems reached out to imaging centers, clinics, and offices at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine meeting with PACS bundles. The company also unveiled a package to support outsourced radiology reading services.

Siemens Healthcare in its booth highlighted syngo TrueD, a multimodality application for oncology. TrueD registers data sets obtained using PET/CT, SPECT/CT, CT, and MR, allowing exams of patients scanned at different times -- before and after therapy, for instance -- to be compared. Differences found in these comparisons may inform decisions about whether to continue or modify treatment. In addition to registration and visualization, TrueD performs quantitative measures that can document changes at up to three time points. Rigid and nonrigid methods for structure comparisons include navigational tools that support visual alignment and matching landmarks.

Philips Healthcare focused attention in its booth on the company’s IT “ecosystem” of about a dozen suppliers of software products that work with its iSite PACs. Philips presented an à la carte approach to the selection of various complementary products, exemplified by Amirsys’ STATdx Diagnostic Decision Support System, which provides reference tools useful in the diagnostic process.

A new storage appliance, iMed-Stor, debuted at the Candelis booth. The DICOM-compliant archive appliance was engineered to securely and cost-effectively manage digital medical images, ideally from a single digital modality. It can be configured to work seamlessly alongside any PACS, according to the company, and can be outfitted with an optional web-based viewer, enabling radiologists to read images from any location offering a secure Internet connection.

Cystic lesions of the pancreas tend to be a phenomenon of aging. By and large, these lesions are benign, but sorting out the small number that have potential for malignancy is important.

Foresight Imaging is previewing at the SIIM conference version 2.2 of its TIMS DICOM software, which helps facilities still using non-DICOM medical modalities to convert to DICOM.

Image analysis and reporting functionality are on display at Carestream’s SIIM booth, where the company is showcasing its latest generation of computed radiography systems, the Kodak DIRECTVIEW Classic and Elite CR systems.

PACS/IT developer RamSoft debuted its PowerServer RIS/PACS at the SIIM conference, framing the new product as a true integration between RIS and PACS, free of HL7 interfacing. The company designed the web-based PowerServer RIS/PACS as the means for small facilities to increase efficiency, while allowing an upgrade path from existing PowerServer PACS installations.

As the SIIM conference opened, Nuance unveiled a new version of its speech recognition product PowerScribe, incorporating enhancements and integration designed to improve radiology workflow. Version 5.0 offers a concentrated focus on accurate, comprehensive, and readily available clinical documentation, according to the company.

It wasn’t intended as a formal roundtable, but a question from the radiology news media -- what are the biggest challenges facing the field -- led some SIIM veterans, participants on a panel assembled by the association, into discussion Thursday of a laundry list of issues facing radiology informatics. Their comments also produced some insights into hot topics to watch in the future.

Konica Minolta Medical Imaging USA framed its ImagePilot CR system, introduced at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) meeting in Seattle, as a new concept in digital radiography. ImagePilot CR, designed as an integrated digital imaging acquisition, review, and storage solution specifically for physician clinics, simplifies image acquisition to a single button push.

A system presented at the SIIM meeting is able to develop work lists based on a patient’s insurance and a radiologist’s credentialing status, important considerations as more and more studies are interpreted away from central offices and facilities try to maximize reimbursement.

Medical archiving and storage specialist InSite One is showing at SIIM a new bundle of recovery services, part of a promotion the company plans to run through December 2008. Dubbed InDex Recovery with Recovery Plus, the bundle automatically backs up PACS databases within the company’s Intelligent Management Gateway, while sending a copy of the data to a primary InSite One warehouse.

IT giant McKesson has acquired Vivalog, a provider of web-based products that enable radiologists and other imaging specialists to organize and share image and reference case information used in daily practice. One such product, MyPACS.net, a web-based community for radiology decision support and information exchange, houses 18,000 reference cases depicting thousands of diseases.

Although it offers tremendous opportunities for advances in imaging interpretation and communication with referring clinicians, advanced visualization still stumbles when it comes to workflow, according to a presentation Friday.

Persistent ground-glass nodules in the lungs are worth a closer look, as they are highly associated with malignancy. Dr. Anne Leung offered an overview of how these lesions present on CT imaging at the 2008 Stanford International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT in Las Vegas.

A comprehensive CT evaluation of the abdomen requires analysis of the mesenteric vasculature above and beyond the axial plane, according to Dr. Elliot Fishman, director of diagnostic radiology and body CT at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital.

A trip through the MR scanner can wreak havoc with implantable cardiac devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators. But this kind of interference may not be limited to MR imaging, according to Cynthia McCollough, Ph.D.

Changes in images introduced by compression algorithms at levels as low as 8:1 can be observed by readers when they are compared with uncompressed images, according to a research report presented at the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine conference Thursday.