Diagnostic Imaging's Weekly Scan: August 31 — September 6

Welcome to Diagnostic Imaging’s Weekly Scan, which offers an opportunity to catch up on the most well-viewed radiology content of the past week.

While there has been a fair amount of hype about whole-body MRI, a new meta-analysis published in European Radiology found the modality had a pooled cancer detection rate of 1.57 percent in asymptomatic individuals. The meta-analysis authors also noted that many of the reviewed studies had incomplete data with respect to follow-up and diagnostic outcomes.

While maintaining that artificial intelligence (AI) for breast imaging is at an “infancy” stage, Zeeshan Shah, M.D., noted in a recent Diagnostic Imaging interview that he can see a pathway where AI has increased capability of pinpointing negative mammography exams, enabling radiologists to spend significantly more time on cases that are more ambiguous and concerning.

In other breast imaging news, a new study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology compared AI software to radiologist interpretation for digital mammography (DM) and digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT). The researchers found that AI offered comparable negative predictive value (NPV) but significantly higher recall rates and false positive results as well.

In a cohort of over 8,700 current and former smokers, the authors of a new study in Radiology found that coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring derived from non-gated low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans demonstrated significant capability for predicting long-term cardiovascular disease mortality up to 25 years.

In a recent interview with Diagnostic Imaging, pediatric cardiologist Takeshi Tsuda discussed integrated wall stress, a product of peak systolic wall stress (PS-WS) calculated with M-mode echocardiography as well as heart rate. Citing recently published research, Dr. Tsuda said integrated wall stress could be a key marker of pre-clinical cardiomyopathy in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Watch the video summary below of Diagnostic Imaging’s Weekly Scan.