CT

Children’s hospitals use dedicated pediatric technologists and more closely follow protocols, resulting in dramatically lower radiation doses. Adult hospitals must take greater care in monitoring dose. Here’s how.

Electronic medical records can track radiation exposure and reduce unnecessary CT scans in emergency room patients with abdominal pain.

New diagnostic agents for use with PET imaging are improving identification of beta-amyloid, the brain plaque associated with Alzheimer’s disease. But there are some concerns about training to accurately read these studies.

SPECT/CT, commonly used for imaging thyroid cancer after radioiodine therapy, was used before therapy to better identify and characterize the cancer.

The modality bests the U.S. standard of care, radiographic skeletal survey, in assessing the extent of the disease.

Young patients, aged 18 to 35, are 35 times more likely to die of their underlying disease than from radiation-induced cancer from CT exams, researchers say.

MR enterography bests CT enterography, but CT enterography is faster, less expensive, and more widely available.

About a third of CT examinations performed following an inconclusive abdominal ultrasound have positive findings, and most are useful in diagnosing renal lesions.

Dedicated pediatric departments and technologists may adhere closer to protocols for pediatric CT scans.

The Aquilion Prime 80 features the AIDR 3D dose reduction software.

Recent recommendations for lung cancer CT screening from the American Lung Association could increase your work flow and change the way insurance providers pay for screenings.

Adaptive Iterative Dose Reduction (ADIR) 3D, the third generation software, will be offered to existing Aquilion One, Premium, and Prime CT customers.

Use of CT scans on pediatric patients in emergency departments has risen between 1999 and 2007, despite no corresponding increase in ultrasound use.

FNAs may produce too many false negatives. Follow up imaging suggested.

CT screening for lung cancer could save thousands of lives if routinely covered by insurers, according to a Health Affairs study.

Increased tube potential for routine scans resulted in an increase of up to 62 percent in organ radiation exposure, compared with normal weight patients.

Researchers found little risk for secondary cancers from multi-detector computed tomography among the Medicare population.

There was concern that cancers diagnosed in routine screening were less aggressive than those found in routine practice.

CCTA is safe and effective, and saves time when assessing patients at low- to intermediate-risk of a heart attack.

New guidelines that call for lower radiation exposure from CT-guided biopsies of lung nodules allows more people to undergo the procedure and may result in fewer overall lung cancer deaths.

Researchers want to make photoacoustic tomography, which pairs light and sound, available to providers. Clinical trials are already under way to visualize sentinel lymph nodes for breast cancer staging – just one of several potential applications of this technology.

In a position statement, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine advise against using bismuth shields for dose reduction in CT scanning when alternatives are available.

CT scan diagnoses right choanal atresia in 6-month-old male child. Pre-surgical evaluation. Non-enhanced axial CT scan of paranasal sinuses.

The use of head CT scans in the emergency department varies widely depending on who the attending doctors are when patients arrive.

Osman Ratib, MD, PhD, FAHA, professor and chief of nuclear medicine in the Department of Radiology at the University Hospital of Geneva, discusses the advantages and future of the hybrid PET/MR modality.