Deborah Abrams Kaplan

Using a headset with a portable, laptop-size console, researchers say they can identify and monitor strokes, ranging from aneurysms to arteriovenous malformations, differentiating them from each other and from normal anatomy. The findings were introduced at last week’s Society of Interventional Radiology’s 36th annual scientific meeting in Chicago.

Navigating through blood vessels during interventional radiology procedures is no easy task. But Toshiba American Medical Systems, Inc. hopes to make it easier with its Volume Navigation 3-D roadmapping software for the InfinixTM-i vascular X-ray product line. The system was on display this week at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s (SIR) annual meeting in Chicago.

While angioplasty is best known for cardiac patients, opening veins to allow for better blood flow could be good for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients as well, according to a new study.

The national march toward regulating radiology extenders continues with Utah becoming the 29th state to regulate, license, or recognize radiologist assistants (RA) as part of the team.

While the digital mammogram is still considered the gold standard for breast screening, those who need additional imaging have new options. Enter nuclear breast imaging, the catch-all phrase for several modalities that use a radiopharmaceutical agent in scanning, including gamma imaging and positron emission mammography (PEM). Known as both molecular breast imaging (MBI) and breast-specific gamma imaging (BSGI), the gamma cameras are an adjunctive technology for suspicious lesions found during mammogram.

Another technology recently introduced is the U-Systems somo-v INSIGHT whole breast ultrasound. The U-Systems (the only company developing this technology) currently has 510(k)-clearance for adjunctive diagnostic use with mammography, and will be seeking approval to use it for a dense breast tissue indication.

Radiologist assistants (RAs) and radiology practitioner assistants (RPAs) may be highly educated and experienced, but CMS won’t pay for their services in all settings. Reimbursement depends on the setting (office, hospital inpatient or outpatient, and independent diagnostic testing facility), the level of physician supervision, and the type of procedure (diagnostic versus surgical/interventional).

When you’re standing in line at the airport, putting your shoes in bins and taking loose change out of your pockets, here’s a conversation starter: How safe is that radiation exposure you’ll get walking through the whole-body security scanner? That’s the issue discussed in a pair of articles to be released in April’s print issue of Radiology.

The workload may be heavy, and the time short, but know this: patients want their radiology study results quickly, and many are happy to get those results directly from the radiologist, according to a new study, which brings up a new or shifting model of patient-centered radiology, where the radiologist is more visible in patient care.

Royal Philips Electronics and Microsoft announced recently that they’re teaming up to give radiologists a more complete way to view patient data, including laboratory and pathology reports, medications, and admission, transfer and discharge data.

When 22 radiologists are told to look for different numbers of lesions on the same chest X-ray, would you expect them to hit that number, identify more, or identify less? This was the question posed in a study just published in the March print issue of Radiology.

Thanks to it being a safe, easy-to-use modality and the machines becoming increasingly smaller and more portable, clinicians ranging from trauma surgeons to cardiologists to anesthesiologists, are finding uses for ultrasound. But point-of-care ultrasound offers a trade-off between modality expertise and speed of diagnosis.

Stroke in young adults is one of the leading causes of disability, and the third leading cause of death, according to the American Stroke Association. Yet with an early MRI scan and the right treatment, the effects from strokes can be can be completely reversed.

Radiologists who interpret a higher volume of mammograms don’t detect more cancers than their lower-volume colleagues - but they do have significantly lower false positive rates, according to a new study just released online in Radiology.

An MRI scan in addition to mammography detects more breast cancers in women who underwent therapeutic chest radiation as children or young adults, than either modality alone, according a new study released this week in Radiology.

Nineteen percent of imaging studies ordered by Pennsylvania orthopedic surgeons were done solely for defensive medicine, and they accounted for 35 percent of the imaging costs, according to a study presented this week at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).

A recent article in the Journal of American College of Radiology explains why it takes so long for new imaging technologies to make their way into the radiology suite. For starters, escalating U.S. government requirements mean that imaging advances take even longer to push through than in the past. The rate of innovation is much faster than the ability to get new technologies through the costly regulatory and adoption process.

Can computerized decision support systems reduce unnecessary advanced imaging tests and radiation exposure? That’s what planners of the Medicare Imaging Demonstration (MID) project hope to find out in their two-year study. CMS last week announced the selection of five participants in the study, which was authorized by the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.

Showing medical students a pair of contrasting normal and pathophysiology radiological cases, can make physiology more relevant and provide active learning, according to an article published in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

Women who get breast MRI scans may have higher false-positives on their baseline studies, but those rates drop on subsequent scans, according to a study to be published in the April issue of Radiology.

With Siemens close on its heels, Philips became the first company to get the green light to market its hybrid whole body PET/MR imaging system. Royal Philips Electronics announced this week that it received a CE marking, allowing the company to begin selling in Europe.

After learning of the CT scan outcomes, physicians changed their diagnoses for 49 percent of patients, and changed management plans for 42 percent, according to a recent study. Doctors decreased the number of those who were initially going to be kept for observation by 44 percent, while 20 percent of patients who were to be admitted were sent home instead.

High utilizers of advanced medical imaging beware: the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) just voted 15-1 this month to recommend to Congress that the top tier of referrers of advanced medical imaging should get prior authorization first.