Advocate Health Care, one of the nation's top health systems and the largest integrated health care system in the state of Illinois, and GE Healthcare, a national leader in low dose, high performance imaging, announced a joint effort to help further reduce radiation dose in computed tomography (CT). The goal is to optimize care for patients needing imaging procedures and reduce radiation where possible without adversely impacting image quality. It’s one of the first announcements of the GE Blueprint for low dose, a comprehensive campaign in which GE Healthcare is working alongside leading U.S. health systems to further reduce radiation dose in CT imaging. Leaders from Advocate and GE Healthcare unveiled the Advocate-based GE Blueprint for low dose today during an event at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital.

October 4, 2012 — New research from the Netherlands shows that the switch from screen film mammography (SFM) to digital mammography (DM) in large, population-based breast cancer screening programs improves the detection of life-threatening cancer without significantly increasing detection of clinically insignificant disease. Results of the study are published online in the journal Radiology.

Regular mammography screening can help narrow the breast cancer gap between black and white women, according to a retrospective study published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment in August.

Riverain Technologies, an industry leader and innovator in proprietary image processing and machine learning technologies, announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded the company broad patents for its technologies, opening the door for the company’s software to be used in wider healthcare applications and in other industries. These two new patents not only protect Riverain’s novel chest X-ray technology, which suppresses bone and calls out suspicious tissue, but also hold enormous promise for the company to bring its breakthrough software to other medical applications, including; computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound.

October 2, 2012 — A clinical trial published in the October issue of Radiology demonstrates that Aurora Imaging Technology’s 1.5T dedicated breast MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) system led to better diagnostic performance for all metrics than has been historically reported in trials for breast MRI on whole-body MRI scanners.

October 1, 2012 — Carestream Health and Bruker have entered into an agreement for Bruker to purchase the preclinical in vivo imaging equipment product portfolio and related assets from Carestream’s Molecular Imaging business. Financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.

September 28, 2012 — New optical imaging technology developed at Tufts University School of Engineering could give doctors new ways to both identify breast cancer and monitor individual patients' response to initial treatment of the disease. A five-year clinical study of the procedure, funded by a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, is now underway at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Avreo announced its latest application, interWorks Mobile, will now be available exclusively from the Apple App Store. interWorks Mobile is designed for referring physicians on the go, providing real-time access to images and reports in Avreo interWorks Version 7.