I don’t know if it is my own insecurity or a real phenomenon, but I feel like corporate America is creeping further into radiology, and most of my life, every year. The number of teleradiology companies continues to expand, and now two of them are publicly held. Every year, more of us become employees of for-profit firms.

Executives at Siemens Medical Solutions hope to end eight years of slice wars with a work-in-progress CT platform unveiled this week at the RSNA meeting.

Public policymakers have long sought valid scientific evidence linking lung disease and secondhand smoke. Their wait ended Monday at the 2007 RSNA meeting, when Chengbo Wang, Ph.D., announced clinical trial results using hyperpolarized helium-3 diffusion MRI to make the connection.

The massive American College of Radiology Imaging Network 6666 trial shows that adding ultrasound to the initial screening protocol for high-risk women could help detect 30% more cancers. The cost, however, could be many more needless biopsies of benign lesions.

In a novel approach to cervical spine trauma, researchers have found that changes in diffusion tensor imaging parameters are most marked at the spinal cord injury site and also reflect the severity of cord injury.

New CT perfusion scanning techniques that are safer and faster than older CT protocols could offer a practical imaging alternative to MR perfusion for stroke patients, according to two studies presented at the 2007 RSNA meeting. Findings also emphasize a new trend for widening the window for thrombolysis.

The soft, white sound of an air conditioner forcing air into a radiology reading room may be music to the virtual ear of speech recognition reporting systems and improve accuracy during automated radiology report transcription.

Executives at Siemens Medical Solutions are out to give competitors, including those selling reburbished MRs, a run for their money. Listing below $1 million, the company’s new Essenza MR scanner is the most affordable 1.5T system in the industry.

Coming to the annual RSNA meeting is exciting and invigorating, usually, but not today. Today, it just made me feel old.

Radiology is at a crossroads, according to three prominent radiologists who have followed the specialty’s digital revolution and evolution of practice. Their message was characterized by the RSNA as “a warning and a challenge.”

Research presented at RSNA 2007 bolsters the role of MR imaging for preoperative surgical planning in patients with known breast cancer and in working up the challenging invasive lobular carcinoma.

The use of multislice CT angiography has increased detection of vascular injury in patients suffering head and neck trauma, prompting debate on whether whole-body screening or focused attention on the head and neck is more useful. Both methods had their proponents at an RSNA session on emergency radiology.

Diffusion-weighted MR imaging could one day become a routine exam for noninvasive characterization and staging of uterine tumors, replacing unnecessary catheter or surgical biopsies, according to several studies released Sunday at the RSNA meeting.

The RSNA has decided to eliminate ultrasound as a separate subspecialty category from its annual meeting’s scientific paper program in favor of an organ-based and clinical subspecialty-based approach. The move was received with mixed reactions by radiologists and sonologists.

Toshiba America Medical Systems has been talking for years about the development of a 256-slice CT. This morning, the company outdid itself, introducing a 320-element detector onboard its FDA-cleared Aquilion One. The announcement came as the exhibit floor opened, just hours before Philips Medical Systems unveiled a 256-slice CT, its Brilliance iCT.

Researchers from Ohio have found huge national discrepancies in waiting times for mammography. Women in the southern states fare much worse than their sisters in other regions.

A study from the Midwest that tracked the effects of converting from traditional transcription to voice recognition software indicates the automated approach is more accurate. The new approach also contributed to an impressive improvement in report turnaround time compared with manual report preparation.

RSNA newcomer Parascript is demonstrating at the RSNA meeting this week algorithms its executives claim could dramatically reduce false positives in mammography computer-aided detection. AccuDetect software could cut false positives by 60% to 80% below those typically encountered in mammography CAD, according to Yuri Prizemin, Parascript director of product marketing.

CT angiography of the lower extremities can be incorporated into whole-body CTA with a reduced contrast load but no reduction in image quality, according to research presented by Dr. Bryan Foster of the Boston University School of Medicine.

A radically redesigned CT platform unveiled by GE Healthcare at the RSNA meeting produces images of soft tissue that rival those taken using MR, according to GE executives, who are framing the platform as a wholly new breed of CT scanner.