Introducing motion into the display of static images could improve detection performance and efficiency, according to a paper presented Friday at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine meeting.

Of the $120 billion spent on healthcare in the U.S. annually, about 10% to 20% is wasted on inappropriate treatment. What if some of those funds were invested in enterprise information systems? Imagine the possibility of routinely using such systems to identify trends in medical imaging procedures and highlight potential errors, inaccuracies, and waste.

The burgeoning field of PACS administration will have its own certification and testing program under an initiative announced Thursday by the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (formerly SCAR).

Effective immediately, the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology (SCAR) is changing its name to the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM). The society also announced today that it will relocate to a new headquarters in Leesburg, VA, this summer.

The typical CT exam exposes patients to the equivalent of between 100 and 250 chest x-rays. This fact escapes most physicians, including radiologists, according to Dianna D. Cody, Ph.D., chief of radiologic physics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Radiology is no neophyte when it comes to information technology. Viewing, managing, and storing digital images has made IT a necessity for the specialty, one of the earliest adopters of data management tools. But lately, radiology has lost ground to other specialties that have successfully implemented image management techniques pioneered by radiology PACS. On a parallel track, the electronic health record has also picked up speed.

The theme of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology 2006 meeting is "Imaging Informatics in Focus." The meeting promises to highlight a broad range of imaging topics of interest to physicians, scientists, technologists, IT specialists, and administrators representing radiology as well as other clinical specialties.

One of the healthcare industry’s most innovative meetings took place in San Diego in February: the Health Information and Management Systems Society annual meeting and exhibition. This year’s HIMSS meeting attracted 25,740 attendees, including staff for 895 exhibitors. More healthcare chief information, technology, and operations officers as well as senior IT managers assemble at this conference than any other gathering in the world.

State-of-the-art 64-slice CT is proving its worth as a potent noninvasive tool for imaging coronary arteries, but it has some noteworthy limitations, according to research presented at the ECR on Tuesday.

A whole-body PET/CT scan can be used to stage and further pinpoint cancers spotted on optical colonoscopy, a research team for Essen University reported Monday. The team also reported that PET/CT scans may be useful in restaging recurrent breast cancer.

Philips Medical Systems chose opening day of the ECR to release the world’s first commercial time-of-flight PET/CT system. The system, scheduled to begin shipping to sites in Europe and the U.S. in June, will more than double image sensitivity, according to the company, allowing users to either markedly improve image quality or cut scan time by a third or more.

Agfa HealthCare plans to distinguish itself in a crowded IT market by providing meaningful integration of different sources of clinical data and bringing the results into clinical workflow, company officials said at the ECR.

CT and MR angiography both provided more clinically useful information than duplex ultrasound in screening peripheral vascular disease. But when costs are factored in, CT emerged as the clear leader, according to a four-hospital study conducted in the Netherlands and described Saturday.

MR offers decided advantages as a tool for image guidance in radiofrequency ablation of liver tumors, but it also presents significant problems that must be overcome before its use becomes widespread, according to a pair of presentations March 5 at the European Congress of Radiology.

New computer-aided detection programs help less experienced readers find clinically significant polyps with CT colonography, but they prove less useful for experts, according to three studies presented at the ECR on Saturday.

MR colonography has yet to capture radiologists’ imagination to the same extent as CT. But the radiation-free exam has a bright future, especially if stool tagging techniques can avoid the need for bowel cleansing, according to speakers from the U.S. and Greece at ECR on Friday.

Low-dose CT can effectively replace plain film in cases of acute abdominal pain, with benefits for clinical diagnosis, according to a study by Swedish researchers presented at the ECR Friday afternoon.

Radiology in Asia is booming. The demand for radiology services is growing, and investment made by governments and private hospitals and companies in imaging equipment and radiology departments is increasing rapidly every year. This includes investments in PACS, RIS, and teleradiology networks.

Attendees at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting had four days to experience a Regional Health Information Organization in action at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise Interoperability Showcase. By improving the state of system integration, the IHE aims to make information readily available wherever it is needed and to remove barriers to optimal patient care.

An insider’s view of the world’s largest integrated delivery network can be had for the price of admission this week at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting in San Diego. The Department of Defense exhibit at HIMSS showcases the healthcare IT programs that consolidate and manage an IDN comprising 70 hospitals, 800 clinics, 60,000 medical professionals, and more than nine million patients.