Early problems of ultra-high field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have been overcome by successful development of adequate hardware. In consequence big efforts have been achieved in structural imaging, as well in functional imaging. Basic scientists and physicians who work in ultra-high-field MRI in Europe and the USA, met at the Berlin Ultra-high-field Facility (BUFF), in the Max Dehlbrück…
The teaching hospital in Olomouc aims to become a national centre for telemedicine. A telemedicine system is currently used by the hospital’s Internal Medicine Department 1 for cardiac patients and almost a hundred patients are remotely monitored via a telesystem implemented by the hospital.
Although cardiac computed tomography (cCT) has shown very good diagnostic accuracy for the detection of coronary artery disease, the physiologic significance of many lesions can be uncertain. Furthermore, the presence of calcified atherosclerotic plaque reduces the ability to differentiate significant stenosis from non obstructive plaque.
Recent reports on cancer risk from radiation at CT have sparked new concern and discussion in the medical community as well as in the general public. It has been suggested that CT may be responsible for up to 2% of all cancers.
Physicians connected with the Friesland Regional Cardiology Network can now consult in real- time with specialists at the regional medical centre to determine the best course of treatment for their patients. The cardiology network not only speeds up the referral process and improves both diagnosis and the clinical decision process, but also is credited with reducing the length of stay for…
During conventional electro-cardiology, interference from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) tends to diminish image quality due to cardiac motion. To exclude that interference an acoustic cardiac triggering (ACT) approach, also called MR stethoscope, has been developed to trigger cardiac MRI at 7-Tesla.
‘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…
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.
Cardiologists are looking beyond on-screen images of the heart to extract data behind these scans that describe coronary dysfunctions and can reveal hard evidence of the cause of disease reports John Brosky.
He literally wrote the book on the subject, so when Jean-Louis Sablayrolles MD, states that low dose computed tomography angiography (CTa) represents a ‘great revolution in cardiac imaging,’ his words carry the weight of deep clinical experience.
Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Imaging (ARFI) is a new tissue strain imaging technology that utilizes sound waves to interrogate the mechanical stiffness properties of tissue. Virtual Touch™ Tissue Imaging and Virtual Touch™ Tissue Quantification are available on the Siemens ACUSON S2000™ ultrasound system.
The idea of publishing a Textbook of Cardiovascular Imaging which accumulates the expertise of European cardiovascular imagers, is long awaited. The new textbook by the European Society of Cardiology is written with a patient rather than technology-based approach, helping clinicians to explain the condition to the patient, with the aid of imaging.
Using a new noninvasive imaging technique, scientists said they have discovered important, fundamental differences in heart motion by age and gender. Their study - reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, a journal of the American Heart Association - is the first to provide gender- and age-specific data on the motions of the normal heart based on a regional analysis of myocardial…
Two members of the Heart Center at the University of Leipzig teamed up during Medica for a tour de force presentation on Future Trends in Cardiac Surgery. "The aim of the game is opening the chest through little keyholes to operate in the most minimally invasive way possible and avoid sternotomy," said Prof. Friedrich Mohr, Program Director at the Leipzig Heart Center, who review new surgical…
Patients with atrial fibrillation, so at risk of stroke, are usually treated with medication to prevent coagulation. The Hanover Medical School (MHH) has devised an alternative treatment.
The evaluation of long-term ECGs is currently performed by the attending physician, who enters the ECG data into a computer for preliminary analysis by a software programme after the patient´s visit. The physician then considers the flagged critical areas to make a diagnosis.
GE Healthcare is presenting its new Venue ultrasound product line at Medica. The Venue 40, the first product launched, provides visualisation for needle guidance procedures and rapid diagnostics in real-time at the bedside. These point-of-care (POC) settings are the fastest growing in ultrasound internationally (USA growth: 30% average in the last four years. Source: industry report by Klein…
The S8, a high-end colour Doppler HCU (hand-carried ultrasound) recently received the 2009 Product Quality Leadership Award from the global consultancy Frost & Sullivan (F&S).
Weighing just 2 KG, in a hospital, small clinic or doctor’s surgery the fully portable Fetatrack DD250 can provide continuous foetal and vascular dopler. The unit operates from a mains electricity supply for 30 hours; alternatively the built-in rechargable batteries can be used. ‘The system has all the necessary facilities for accurate antenatal foetal assessment in one compact unit,’…
‘Supremely portable and incredibly tough, the NanoMaxx ultrasound system combines Best in Class performance with affordability and simplicity,’ the Erlangen-based manufacturer SonoSite reports.
The heart of cardiac radiology set the rhythm for this October's 10th Annual Meeting of the European Society of Cardiac Radiology (ESCR) in Leipzig, when state-of-the art technology and progress in cardiac imaging were introduced alongside an educational programme that catered for experienced as well as novice cardiac radiologists
In the last fifteen years, myocardial perfusion SPECT imaging (MPI) has been performed most commonly by dual-head conventional scintillation cameras with parallel-hole collimators, configured in a 90ºdetector geometry and image reconstruction based on standard filtered back projection (FBP) algorithms. Such arrangement, although clinically well established suffers from important limitations…
Today, transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) represents an effective therapeutic alternative to conventional aortic valve replacement for patients who are at high risk or with contraindications to surgery, and the combination of the transfemoral and transapical approaches further increases the number of patients who can be treated.
After two years of intensive work the results from the German pilot phase of the EuroCMR Register are due to be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology*, and also presented and discussed in detail at this year's ECR in Barcelona.
Measuring left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF) is the gold standard for determining the risk of cardiac death or sudden cardiac death after a myocardial infarction (MI). If LVEF is below 30%, a cardioverter-defibrillator is implanted to avoid such an event.