Over the years, we've grown comfortable and familiar with the digital revolution in radiology. Actually, in many quarters it is no longer a revolution but an accomplished fact.

When it comes to evaluating 3D workstations, the proof is in the clicks-the fewer the better. That's the consensus of attendees at a workstation face-off event held during the Society of Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance annual meeting in South Beach, FL, in March.

Rising standards of patient care are driving PACS adoption among top-quality medical facilities in Japan, South Korea, and China, making the Asia-Pacific region the third largest PACS market after the U.S. and Europe, according to an industry report from Frost & Sullivan.

For much of the last decade, the future of PACS seemed intertwined with that of digital radiography. The widespread adoption of DR would signal the end of film-based radiology, according to PACS advocates. No one foresaw the haymaker that multislice CT would land or the follow-up cross coming from MR. Together they have ended the debate over the value of PACS.

The urgent need to more efficiently manage the volume and flow of images in the radiology and medical fields has grown dramatically as scanning technology has evolved. Initially, soft-copy display, especially for multislice MR and CT studies, often simply reproduced the view radiologists would expect to see if they were reading formatted film. Images were tiled on the monitor using some predefined format, such as a display of four or 12 images. The images were frequently transferred using multiple preset window and level settings, such as bone or soft tissue.

The Battle of New Orleans marked the last of the hostilities in the War of 1812. The Treaty of Ghent that ended the war had been signed three months earlier in Europe, but this information was, unfortunately, still making its way across the Atlantic at the time of the 1814 battle. Had knowledge of the treaty been available sooner, lives might have been spared.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston has decided not to mesh its cardiac PACS and enterprise/radiology PACS, at least for the time being. The main reason is cost, according to Georgann Bruski, director of invasive cardiology.

For much of the last decade, the future of PACS seemed intertwined with that of digital radiography. The widespread adoption of DR would signal the end of film-based radiology, according to PACS advocates. No one foresaw the haymaker that multislice CT would land or the follow-up cross coming from MR. Together they have ended the debate over the value of PACS.

The effective doses associated with virtual colonoscopy have remained constant despite the increased use of multislice scanners, primarily due to the use of lower dose protocols, according to a study presented at the 2004 RSNA meeting.

Physical examination of bariatric patients is challenging. Radiology can play an important role, but only if the patients can be imaged. They sometimes cannot fit comfortably into a cylindrical high-field MR system. As a result, physicians may refer patients to lower field open systems, but lower field strength can pose a problem. The Magnetom Espree offers a solution.

Five-year data released at the Society of Interventional Radiology meeting in April show that uterine artery embolization has a 73% success rate for treating uterine fibroids.

From the White House to the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. government is encouraging the adoption of medical information technology. The primary goal is to reduce errors, and one way to accomplish that might be to give patients responsibility for their medical records. A radiologist in Graz, Austria, has done exactly that, with surprising results.

Interventional radiologists' procedure volumes in the field of percutaneous peripheral arterial interventions were significantly outpaced by those of cardiologists in the period between 1997 and 2002. Cardiologists' self-referral accounts for their higher volumes of these procedures, according to a study conducted at Thomas Jefferson University.

A large multicenter trial of CT colonography has started collecting patients and some criticism among advocates who say it may undercut the procedure and produce not much more than is known already.

A more stressful examination is hard to imagine. The patient is a star performer, insured by his soccer club for $78 million, but a suspected groin strain might force him to miss the Champions' League final in two weeks. The club's physicians call the radiology department every five minutes, while dozens of reporters and paparazzi line up outside the hospital, desperate for a scrap of news or photographic evidence of the damaged body part.

Self-referral accounts for the dramatic increase in cardiologists’ share and volume of percutaneous peripheral vascular interventions, according to researchers at Thomas Jefferson University.

Outcomes research at the University of Rochester in upstate New York suggests that endovascular therapy should be the first line of treatment for peripheral vascular disease.

A 1979 report, A network of medical workstations for integrated work and picture communication for clinical medicine, is recognized today as one of the first publications to describe the concept of PACS. Given the significance of PACS in modern radiological workflow, the authors of this seminal work might be expected to take pride in their prescience.

Integrating 3D reformatting software into PACS workstations has allowed radiologists at Boston College Medical Center to take advantage of the power of 3D imaging in the emergency department.