Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) was approved in the United States for use as a supplement to traditional mammography following U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review of two studies in which radiologists showed a 7 percent improvement in the ability to distinguish between cancerous and noncancerous cases using 3-D datasets.

As the use of mobile computing devices and smartphones has rapidly proliferated in healthcare over the past few years, there has been a flood of medical applications (apps) developed for all facets of medicine. In an increasingly tech savvy world, people want information to be at their fingertips when and where they need it via their mobile devices.

Radiation therapy has played an important role in the treatment of cancer for more than a century. Used typically as a curative treatment either alone or in conjunction with surgery and/or chemotherapy, the aim of radiation therapy has always been to eradicate a patient’s cancer.

Whether it is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) or another type of imaging system, reliable power protection is critical for the proper operation and uptime of imaging applications. But what happens if a healthcare facility suffers a power brownout, surge or outage? How do these events affect imaging equipment?

With concerns about radiation dose and reducing unnecessary imaging scans, advances in computed tomography (CT) systems have brought about technologies such as iterative reconstruction software, intraoperative capabilities and dose-tracking software. In addition, recent studies on the use of CT on select patient populations and the modality’s benefits in detecting certain cancers are showing that the risks of CT imaging can go both ways. While CT exams can add to a patient’s lifetime exposure to ionizing radiation, they can also be more beneficial in cases where magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or ultrasound might not be able to detect early-stage cancers. Some of these trends in utilization indicate that appropriate low-dose CT imaging will be key across patient populations.