Controversies were certainly aired when 800 radiologists gathered in Salzburg for The Interventional Radiological Olbert Symposium - a meeting of the German, Austrian and Swiss Societies for Interventional Radiology (DEGIR ÖGIR and SGCVIR) – and certainly some striking new interventions were presented. Michael Krassnitzer reports
The independent Compliance Panel of European medical technology industry association Eucomed has launched a conference vetting system to review and approve third-party educational conferences in accordance with the Eucomed Code of Ethical Business Practice.
A preliminary study for thyroid examination with the new Accuvix A30 from Samsung has shown positive results. Dr Vito Cantisani, PhD, Radiologist at the hospital Umberto I from university Sapienza in Rome, president of CEUS and New Application section of SIUMB, presented the first preliminary results with thyroid elastography ECI at ECR 2012.
This year the European Society of Radiology formally recognized Emergency Radiology (ESR) as a sub-specialty putting its full support behind this critical practice area with a scientific subcommittee to encourage specialized research.
The fact that between 60% and 80% of people are expected experience some form of back pain at some point in their lives puts the importance of advances in imaging of the spine into context. A number of developments in imaging of the spine and peripheral nerves were outlined at a musculoskeletal scientific session at ECR 2012 in Vienna on Saturday morning.
The European Congress of Radiology (ECR), the annual meeting of the die European Society of Radiology (ESR), started on Thursday in Vienna. 20,000 visitors are expected to participate in the congress which is one of the largest healthcare events worldwide.
20,000 participants attended ECR 2011 – a record its organising body, the European Society of Radiology (ESR), which represents more than 56,000 radiologists worldwide, is keen to surpass. Thus, for 2012, it set out to create an even more attractive, versatile programme, which is led by Congress President Lorenzo Bonomo, Professor of Radiology and Chairman of the Department of Radiological…
Early this year the radiology and nuclear medicine practice of Doctors Andreas Blynow, Frank Muller, Jorg Kowalski in Ludwigshafen, Germany, began to offer breast examinations using Europe’s first Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) scanner. With 15 years experience with Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Dr Muller introduced the new PEM scanner to the partners’ practice to detect and assess…
At ECR 2012, Sectra will highlight the latest development within its product suites with the main focus on how radiology can increase their service to referring physicians thereby becoming number one for their customers in increasingly competitive and challenging environment.
Critical ultrasound, as a tool for immediate therapeutic decisions, and emergency POC ultrasound – an extension of the clinical examination at the bedside or on the accident scene – have shown clear benefits along with lung ultrasound.
This remains critical in radiology and demand rows for even more rapid report turnaround and quicker access to imaging, especially for cancer.
This technique is increasingly used to detect breast cancer and has been shown to improve diagnosis in many clinical situations. It is also allowing clinicians to detect previously unknown areas of breast cancer in women with newly diagnosed disease.
MRI: Although an area of constant debate, this is becoming a widely accepted clinical modality in Europe. However, researchers in The Netherlands have shown that performing pre-operative breast MRI in all women with invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) can reduce the need for re-excision.
Radiologists in the United Kingdom have taken steps to help ensure unexpected findings iscovered during the course of imaging research are being recorded and effectively disseminated, Mark Nicholls reports.
Many smokers continue to use tobacco despite high taxes and drastic health warnings. Indeed, in industrialised countries, tobacco-related mortality rates or illnesses are increasing. These include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the fourth leading cause of death in adults – and rising.
When scanning seizures, Dr Walter Kucharczyk, director of MRI at Toronto General Hospital, believes that MRI still remains the best imaging test to discover if there is an anatomic or structural abnormality that might account for a seizure.
Radiology constantly evolves. There are technical advances in terms of the capabilities of various modalities, greater clarity from contrast agents that are also safer for patients, and innovation in techniques that gains even greater performance from existing equipment, or enables further development.
Sonography is the most important non-invasive supplementary procedure to mammography, the current gold standard in breast cancer diagnostics. High-resolution ultrasound can reliably distinguish cysts and solid lesions.
During the RSNA 2011, Professor Uwe J Schoepf MD, was asked what will be the chosen procedure of the future in cardiac imaging, he answered without hesitation: ‘Definitely CT,’ and, the Director of Cardiovascular Imaging at the Medical University Charleston, South Carolina.
Security checks – the necessary evil for air and land travellers. While luggage scans and body pat-downs are ubiquitous, drug smugglers have increasingly used their own bodies as a vessel to conceal and transport their goods.
In Berlin, from 24-26 April visitors to this international congress and trade fair will hear of medical imaging, process optimisation and facility management, and the latest construction, operation and equipment trends The event will run alongside Euro ID, a trade fair for automatic identification, and conhIT, an IT healthcare industry tradeshow.
Education and science are not the only exciting aspects of the European Congress of Radiology; the Vienna venue is also a stage on which companies can introduce novel concepts in medical imaging. Following one product’s world premiere during the RSNA 2011 in Chicago, the Echelon Oval 1.5-T MR system is now debuting before a European audience at the ECR 2012.
Shimadzu has launched a new fully digital R/F system, the Flexavision F3, which has a portable dynamic flat panel detector (FPD) – making this a system suitable for fluoroscopic as well as radiographic applications.
Samsung Medison and Samsung Electronics are in the Austria Centre introducing visitors to new products, including an advanced ultrasound system and a digital X-ray series
About two years ago iterative image reconstruction was officially introduced for CT imaging. Since then, no other technological innovation has raised more hope that the dose of X-ray based, cross sectional imaging can be significantly lowered. The possibilities of this procedure have not yet been exhausted.