MRI

With a click of a mouse, referring physicians in selected states can get an instant evaluation of imaging centers competing for their business. OptiNet, a new web-based tool, lets physicians quickly compare quality and cost of imaging services at centers and hospitals within 30 miles of a patient’s address. It assigns a letter grade for each modality offered, along with an average cost per exam.

Congressional support is growing for legislation that would authorize $650 million for prostate cancer imaging research and education.

The landscape for new vascular stent development has been “featureless” since 2001 largely because of a lack of commitment to R&D by the medical device industry. The only way to reverse this trend is to invest heavily today to find the fundamental stent technology of the future, said Dr. Julio Palmaz in the Andreas Gruntzig Lecture at the 2007 annual meeting in Athens of the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology Society of Europe.

Siemens’ deal passes antitrust hurdleGE launches bone-trending softwareMedrad unveils 3T prostate coils Proposed legislation targets men’s health

Physicians need improved ways to perform diagnosis, biopsy, and treatment procedures in patients with prostate cancer. More powerful MR imaging magnets and MR-guided devices may offer a path to these improvements.

The heart may hold secrets to predicting the future onset of Type 2 diabetes, with the help of proton MR spectroscopy. This elegant finding emerged from research by Lidia Szczepaniak, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. Using anatomical MRI and metabolic MRS, they found that myocardial triglyceride content was 2.3 times higher in subjects with impaired glucose tolerance and 2.1 times higher in subjects with Type 2 diabetes than in normal subjects.

Cardiac proton MR spectroscopy helps identify early signs of heart dysfunction in patients with impaired glucose tolerance or Type 2 diabetes, a finding that could enable early interventions to ward off organ failure, according to a new study published in the journal Circulation.

Bob Bell has advice for the scores of freestanding MRI services that suddenly faced a possible loss of privately insured business when United Healthcare announced that it would limit reimbursement to sites that are accredited or seeking accreditation on March 1, 2008.

A study by researchers from Boston and Brussels has found MR imaging more accurate than bone scintigraphy and x-rays for detection of bone metastases from prostate cancer. MRI could boost staging and management of these patients in a cost-effective way.

Large-screen photographs of cotton bolls, snakeskin, cacti, and trees saddled with the overgrowth of new limbs often star in provocative lectures about early-stage breast cancer by Dr. Laszlo Tabar, a pioneer in mammography education.

Want to light up the pleasure center in your brain? Pay your taxes and then voluntarily give a little extra to your local food bank.

Beneath the layers of rational thought that insulate humanity from other animals lie the engines of our discontent, the clusters of neurons unevolved from pre-Neanderthal days whose firings bring fear and anger, wants and desires. Beside them are the centers that distinguish us by our empathy, charity, and good will.

Healthy adolescent tennis players looking to go pro may be unaware of the damage they’re doing to their spines. Using MR scans, researchers at the Royal National Orthopedic Hospital in Middlesex, U.K., discovered a variety of spinal abnormalities in the lower backs of elite tennis players aged 16 to 23.

The inaugural CVI Philadelphia dinner symposium on cardiovascular imaging, held in early August, was deemed a success by organizer Dr. Jeffrey Hellinger, director of cardiovascular imaging and the 3D laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

A patient who received multiple doses of the gadolinium contrast agent ProHance has developed nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, according to Bracco, the agent’s manufacturer.

Breast MRI is far superior to x-ray mammography for picking up ductal carcinoma in situ generally, and for spotting high-grade early-stage disease in particular, according to a prospective observational study published Aug. 11 in The Lancet.

MR-guided cryotherapy provides tumor control and pain relief to patients with inoperable soft tissue and bone metastases unresponsive to other treatments without hurting adjacent structures, according to a study led by Harvard researchers.

The first substantive clinical trials of dual-source CT suggest it will deliver on a promise to improve the detection of coronary artery disease. A Dutch study published in the August 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found it is 95% sensitive and 95% specific on a per-segment basis for diagnosing significant stenoses.

The American College of Radiology has redesigned its MR imaging accreditation program to address six clinical subspecialties served by the modality.

Most radiology meetings now devote some sessions to the hot topic of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis. The question about which agents are safest invariably comes up during question and answer sessions.

After absorbing the details contained in 924 pages, analysts are finding reasons for both optimism and caution regarding the proposed 2008 Physician Fee Schedule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Radiologists may immediately focus on its 9.9% rate reduction, but the mammoth document also lays out sweeping reforms covering the hot points of alleged kickback and self-referral abuses.

The Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 may look like straightforward legislation to reauthorize a popular healthcare insurance program for poor children, but major reforms directed at medical imaging and the healthcare system as a whole are embedded in the bill passed by the House of Representatives Aug. 1.

MRI has helped researchers identify structural and functional abnormalities in the brains of people experiencing schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. The defects clustered in areas of the brain responsible for processing voices.

From illustrating the effects of minor head injury to showing the brain activation underlying childhood intelligence, studies that combine psychological tests and functional MRI are a powerful and versatile way to make connections between human behavior and neurophysiology.

Minimally invasive approaches that promise to reduce post-therapy morbidity are currently being investigated, but their efficacy will depend on physicians' knowing the exact location of cancer within the prostate. This is where the quality of images attained with 3T MRI could come in, according to Dr. Peter Choyke, chief of molecular imaging at the National Cancer Institute.

show of hands from the audience at a special ISMRM/ESMRMB symposium on nephrogenic systemic fibrosis said a lot without saying a word about the growing prevalence of this condition among patients who have undergone gadolinium-based contrast-enhanced MR imaging.

Armed with endorectal coil MRI and other advanced imaging techniques, radiologists could one day help transform management of the most common cancer in men, saving many from needless impotence, incontinence, and post-treatment recurrence.

MR-guided biopsies at 3T are showing great promise in prostate cancer because of their speed and high tumor detection rate in patients with rising prostate-specific antigen levels but previous negative biopsies, according to a leading research team from the Netherlands.

The 2007 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine meeting looked backed at past accomplishments and forward to innovations that will define future MRI practice. The meeting, jointly sponsored with the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology, was held in Berlin May 19 to 25, two months after the death of Paul Lauterbur, Ph.D., a key figure in the invention of MRI.

Radiologist interest in whole-body diffusion-weighted MRI for cancer applications is intensifying following preliminary studies that demonstrate its potential value for staging cancer. Whole-body DWI produces a composite image using a STIR echo-planar diffusion-weighted technique with a high b-value for background suppression.