Toshiba launches MR techniqueMR angiography can be accomplished without the injection of contrast media, using a technique now available from Toshiba America Medical Systems. Contrast Improved Angiography (CIA) visualizes smaller vessels with greater contrast and better separation of arterial and venous blood flows, according to the company. CIA is built on a fresh blood imaging technology that Toshiba developed seven years ago. The new technique runs on Toshiba’s Excelart Vantage system.

Guidelines developed by proponents of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise initiative may smooth the way for building PACS into electronic health records.

The evolution of technology reshapes the practice of medicine. Imaging replaces guesswork with facts. But not all the time. The presence of imaging technology is widely felt in diagnostics but hardly so in therapeutics.

Facilities that overlook a radiology department’s organizational and political nuances during PACS implementation do so at their own risk, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Understanding a department’s organizational structure is key to implementation success.

The evolution of technology reshapes the practice of medicine. Imaging replaces guesswork with facts. But not all the time. The presence of imaging technology is widely felt in diagnostics but hardly so in therapeutics.

Merger fever has again gripped the imaging community. The megamergers, like the Philips and Marconi union, are done. The big vendors are now looking for small fry to fill their needs. And there are plenty of small and medium fry around.

Fusion imaging is making inroads as an imaging strategy for RFA and other tumor ablation techniques. The sophisticated melding of functional and structural imaging modalities allows physicians to more accurately map out the procedure beforehand and monitor the results afterward. A few software packages allow physicians to check their real-time progress against preprocedural images, and new products and procedures to automate the process are being developed.

Patients undergoing simultaneous carotid endarterectomy and coronary artery bypass graft surgeries may face a higher risk of stroke, according to a study published in Neurology.

Five years ago, Dr. Michael Soulen, an interventional radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, used radiofrequency ablation to kill malignant liver tumors in six patients per year. He now treats about the same number of patients with tumors in several organs during a single day, using a host of interventional oncology procedures.

The Society of Interventional Radiology launched an interventional oncology task force (IOTF) last year to develop the emerging field. The task force sought to integrate research, education, clinical standards, practice building, and public outreach and put a face on interventional oncology in the U.S. and abroad. It also sought a strategic partnership between IRs and oncology specialists including clinicians, radiation therapists, and surgeons.

A turbo spin-echo 1.5T image of the brain demonstrates 0.4 x 0.4-mm in-plane resolution and a 3-mm slice thickness. The image was obtained using a 90-channel phased- array head coil developed at the MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Charlestown, MA. The coil consists of a close-fitting fiberglass helmet with 90 overlapping 48-mm-diameter circular surface coils.

While MR manufacturers have attempted for more than a decade to improve patient comfort by means of clam-shaped scanners and short-bore magnets, the concept of increased space for patients in CT scanners is a new one.

Regarding "Breast tomosynthesis trials show promise" (May, page 42), I thought you might be interested in a brief history of the development of digital breast tomosynthesis.

Subtracted views of coronary vessels, reconstructed from CT data of the heart, may provide the means for screening patients with suspected coronary artery disease.

Developed by radiologist Dr. Taro Takahara and colleagues at Tokai University School of Medicine in Japan, diffusion-weighted whole-body MR imaging with background body signal suppression (DWIBS) paves the way for practical whole-body 3D MR diffusion imaging. A new STIR-EPI sequence, performed with SENSE parallel processing, permits long acquisition times during free breathing to boost contrast resolution and overcome fat saturation problems. Gray scale was reversed, black for white, producing a rotating 3D maximum intensity projection that resembled volumetric displays now frequently generated with FDG-PET. The mechanism for producing DWI contrast in metastatic disease is not clearly understood but is thought to be associated with large cell sizes and high cellular densities that are common in cancerous tissue. Takahara described the approach at the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting in May.

Radiologists could face a dramatic increase in workload if virtual colonoscopy becomes the modality of choice for colon cancer screening. A study presented at the May American Roentgen Ray Society meeting found that reading exams in less than five minutes with only a minor decrease in sensitivity is feasible.

Characterizing musculoskeletal tumors with MR spectroscopy could eliminate the need for standard imaging and histological staging. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found preliminary success using MRS at 3T to diagnose bone tumors.

Enterprise-wide integration has become the driving force behind many healthcare IT projects. Planners should include the operating theater in their digital workflow schemes, according to participants in a joint Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery/International Society for Optical Engineering workshop on surgical PACS and the digital operating room.

Even partial use of voice recognition (VR) systems significantly reduces report turnaround time, enhancing the appeal of PACS to referring physicians, according to a study presented at the recent meeting of the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology.

Siemens Medical Solutions ultrasound division has acquired Sensant, a developer of silicon-based ultrasound transducer technology, for an undisclosed price.