February 26, 2021 — The U.S.
Radiology Imaging
The radiology imaging channel includes technology news related to computed tomography (CT), digital radiography (DR / X-ray), ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), radiographic fluoroscopy (R/F), mammography, angiography, 3-D printing, contrast media injectors, molecular imaging, neurological imaging, pediatric imaging and radiation dose management.

55-year-old woman who underwent screening mammogram and ultrasound 7 days after first COVID-19 vaccination dose. Screening mammogram and US demonstrated unilateral left axillary lymph node with cortical thickness of 5 mm on ultrasound (not shown). BI-RADS category 0 was assigned. Ultrasound from diagnostic work-up performed 7 days later showed no change in lymph node size. BI-RADS 3 was assigned.

Examples of the imaging performance of XPCI-CT (b,e) compared to conventional specimen radiography (a,d) and benchmarked against histopathology (c,f). he top row focuses on the similarity between the XPCI-CT slice in (b) and the histological slice in (c). Arrow 1 indicates margin involvement, arrow 2 a variation in density in the internal structure of the tumour mass, arrow 3 tumour-induced inflammation. All this is confirmed by the histological slice in (c), and hardly visible in the conventional image in (a). The bottom row focuses on the detection of small calcifications, a key feature in DCIS. These are undetectable in (d), detected in (e), enhanced in the maximum intensity projection (MIP) image at the bottom of (f), and confirmed by histopathology in the top part of (f). The scale bar [shown in (b) and (e)] is the same for all images apart from (f), which has its own scale. Red arrows in (e) and (f) indicate the microcalcifications. Image courtesy of Professor Alessandro Olivo

F-18 FES PET images of patients with ER+/PR+/HER2- invasive ductal carcinoma. Left panel: Progressive disease seen at the 8-week time-point in a patient on sequential therapy. Right panel: Stable disease through all 3 time-points, remaining on study therapy for 6.7 months until disease progression on combined vorinostat aromatase inhibitor therapy. Image created by Lanell M Peterson, Research Scientist, University of Washington Medical Oncology, Seattle WA.

Axial FLAIR MR image shows T2 prolongation in bilateral middle cerebellar peduncles (arrows). Findings were associated with restricted diffusion and areas of T1 hypointense signal without enhancement or abnormal susceptibility. Image courtesy of American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS), American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR)

GE Healthcare introduced its artificial intelligence (AI) automation features on its Voluson Swift ultrasound platform at the 2020 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) virtual meeting. Features of this system include semi-automated contouring, auto identification of fetal anatomy and positioning on imaging. AI is seeing increasing integration in ultrasound systems from numerous vendors.

Example MR images from paediatric brain tumour patients. This first column shows T1-weighted images following the injection of gadolinium contrast agent. The second column shows T2-weighted images and the final column shows apparent diffusion coefficient maps calculated from diffusion-weighted images. (a–c) are taken from a patient with a Pilocytic Astrocytoma, (d–f) are from a patient with an Ependymoma and (g–i) were acquired from a patient with a Medulloblastoma. Image courtesy of Nature Research Journal

T1 structural images for the two sequences, MPRAGE and MPRAGE+PMC. The top row shows the MPRAGE sequence, while the bottom row shows the images that were generated with the MPRAGE+PMC sequence. Columns represent two different participants, one with minimal head motion (left, Low-Mover) and another with a large quantity of motion (right, High-Mover). Pial and white matter (WM) surface reconstruction from Freesurfer are also shown.