January saw the release of a German language version of Radiation Passport, an iPhone application that enables patients to calculate estimated radiation exposure from diagnostic imaging procedures and keep a personal record of their examinations. Radiation Passport costs US$3.99; by the end of 2009 over 1,000 English language versions were sold.
A key development at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), east of England, has seen a change in the role of radiology assistants: They now help to prepare patients for radiology scans and look after them -- work previously undertaken by radiographers. The change now allows radiographers more time to concentrate on scanning patients, resulting in faster scanning with quicker…
‘There are few reasons to deny a patient an MRI scan, and nearly all of them are having a pacemaker,’ said Pierre Bordachar MD at the Centre Hopitalière Universitaire (CHU), Bordeaux, France. Yet one-in-five pacemaker patients will require an MRI scan within the first year of receiving a pacemaker, while more than half of all pacemaker patients will need such a scan at some later point in…
An international study, conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has shown that some countries are over-exposing children to radiation when performing computed tomography (CT) scans. These children are receiving adult-sized radiation doses, although experts have warned against the practice for over a decade.
What a success! On 6 March, ECR meeting room K was filled to capacity when congress president Professor Małgorzata Szczerbo-Trojanowska opened the Hospital Management Symposium 2010 (HMS). The number of pre-registrations bore witness to HMS’ high reputation. Many ECR participants had immediately the HMS time bracket in their agendas in order not to miss the new developments in “Management,…
Increasingly, hospitals have to find ways to optimise the capacity, efficiency and utilization of their MRI services. David Wormald, Integrated Assistant Vice President for Diagnostic Services at Hamilton Health Sciences & St. Joseph's Healthcare, Hamilton, Canada, knows this problem in and out – and a few solutions on top of it.
The key to implementing PACS installations networked to multiple hospitals is fully to establish in advance exactly what clinical scenario needs to be satisfied. In her lecture, Dr Nicola H Strickland BM BCh, at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK, spoke about the several possibilities, as well as the requirement and challenges which have to be considered in each scenario.
For a patient with heart failure, checking whether the heart could benefit from bypass surgery or a stent is critical to ensuring survival. One imaging technique, positron emission tomography (PET) with the imaging agent fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), may provide doctors with the information they need to make more informed treatment decisions, according to research published in the April issue of The…
Carestream Health announced it is taking orders for its CARESTREAM DRX-Mobile Retrofit Kit that will allow healthcare providers to upgrade selected mobile x-ray systems to wireless DRX-1 technology. This wireless DR system can help increase on-site productivity and deliver immediate access to images for improved patient care, especially for critically ill patients in emergency rooms, operating…
At Mannheim University Medical Centre five MR units are currently installed - the Magnetom Tim Trio, 2 x Magnetom Avanto, Magnetom Sonata and the new Magnetom Skyra, which was presented at the RSNA 2009 and is equipped with completely new software.
The threat of litigation is becoming an increasing area of concern in radiology circles. The changing role of the radiologist with a growing workload and more information now available in imaging examinations, have combined with an expectation of greater accuracy from patients to raise the threat of radiologists being sued. This threat has reached such a level that for the first time, radiology…
Spurred on by the success of PET/CT and the collaboration of radiology and nuclear medicine, further techniques such as PET/MR or SPECT/CT have been developed, bringing imaging modalities and nuclear tracers and technologies closer. The time has now come to identify applications for hybrid modalities and train future users, as was explained today by a pannel of specialists led by Prof Thomas F.…
A special feature of this year’s scientific program at ECR 2010 was a joint session organized by the European Association for Nuclear Medicine with the European Society of Radiology. Two speakers representing the EANM took the podium to review developments in nuclear medicine and to challenge colleagues on specific applications.
Under constant and continuing debate, and given the increasing use of CT and interventional imaging, the issue of radiation dose management was the focus of an ECR session with Dr Manthos Koutalonis, Medical Physicist at the Barts and The London NHS Trust – Radiation Safety Group, as moderator and presentations by three key speakers.
Sectra launched a solution for efficient management of all medical imaging across departments throughout the entire enterprise, from radiology to the hospital photographer.
GE Healthcare is highlighting advanced solutions that drive the efficiency of diagnostic imaging at the European Congress of Radiology (ECR), 2010. Complementing the company’s ‘healthymagination’ initiative of reducing healthcare costs through timely care, GE Healthcare is highlighting a range of Computed Tomography (CT) imaging solutions including Adaptive Statistical Iterative…
TeraRecon, Inc. announced new innovations to Aquarius iNtuition solution at the 22nd European Congress of Radiology, March 4-8, 2010 in Vienna, Austria. TeraRecon’s iNtuition is at the forefront of technology evolution, at once providing enterprise-wide access to, and advanced processing and visualization of, the latest imaging data.
First introduced at ECR 2010, Agfa HealthCare’s DX-M is a CR solution able to handle both needle-based detector plates (NIP), as well as standard phosphor plates (PIP). The solution’s ability to read NIP for Mammography requirements as well as NIP for general radiography means that the solution meets a market demand for high quality diagnostic images across needs, and offers potential dose…
Over the past decades new imaging technologies have substantially broadened the range of imaging applications in clinical medicine. For years anatomical imaging modalities, such as X-ray and CT, reveal high-resolution information of organs and tissues over extended imaging ranges. Lately, however, the idea of functional imaging e.g. the visualisation of physiology in vivo gains importance.
While biomarkers are acknowledged as useful tools in the early assessment of patient response to treatment, radiologists are less clear on how they can be applied in clinical practice. The ECR session Biomarkers: new word, new world, new work? explored a number of new applications for biomarkers with senior radiologists discussing their relevance in different areas.
The Opening Lecture at ECR always draws immense attention. On March 4th, it was the “First Lady of Radiology” as Congress President M. Szczerbo-Trojanowska called her, Professor Dr Anne G. Osborn, University of Utah, USA, who opened the event. The internationally renowned doctor of diagnostic neuroradiology spoke about “The two faces of HIV/AIDS in the brain” – a matter close to her…
The past year has not improved the prospects for ultrasound, according to Lorenzo Derchi, MD, who chaired the session at ECR 2010 dedicated to « Future direction of ultrasound » and opened the discussion by saying the field is in decline.
The fast-expanding capabilities of imaging with computed tomography (CT) can leave your head spinning, which seemed to be the effect on the participants at the New Horizons Session at ECR 2010 entitled ‘Functional imaging in CT: Optional or built-in?’
Clinicians gathering in Brussels for the first-ever conference on Molecular Imaging in Radiation Oncology (MIRO), from 18-20 March, will take the first steps toward setting practice guidelines for using PET scans to target radiotherapy, a task that will culminate with publication of these recommendations in September.
‘We are very proud that our country and our society has been selected to be presented during the special ESR meets Poland session,’ said Professor Marek J Sasiadek, Vice-President of the Polish Medical Radiological Society. ‘The history of Polish radiology began in 1896, just a few months after Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery, when the first X-ray image was performed in Krakow.
