What’s healthy? What’s not? These questions should be easy to answer in our world of high-tech, high-resolution scanners. But population-based studies demonstrate they are anything but.
A comparison between mammography vs. molecular breast imaging (MBI).
A comparison of breast cancer seen on mammography vs. molecular breast imaging (MBI).

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in developed countries.[1] It is estimated that about 12 percent of women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of their lifetime and more than 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2015.[2] It is important to know the risks and warning signs of breast cancer, and having the benefit of early detection is invaluable, but sometimes that’s easier said than done.
Doctors-at-PACS-computer_Philips-PR

Of all the departments in a hospital, radiology arguably holds the most and richest variety of data. There’s so much data, in fact, that it can be difficult to know what to do with it all and how to handle it. As the healthcare industry continues to shift toward a value-based payment model, utilizing that data becomes even more important as hospitals take a look at their operations and try to improve their performance. For radiology departments struggling with information overload, business analytics can provide a solution. 
Critical Issues Facing Radiology.
Critical Issues Facing Radiology

The landscape of the healthcare industry is poised for dramatic change in 2015 and the years ahead, and radiologists need to be ready to adapt if they’re going to thrive. This was the overarching message from the plenary session “Critical Issues Facing the Practice of Radiology in 2015 and Beyond” at RSNA 2014, presented by Bibb Allen, Jr., M.D., FACR; Geraldine McGinty, M.D., FACR; and James A. Brink, M.D., FACR, all members of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Board of Chancellors. 

 

Sharing — it’s a quality we all learned at a young age to aspire toward. Our parents, our teachers, our friends and our siblings (OK, maybe not our siblings!) all challenged us to learn to share. Over the past few years with implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), even our federal government has created an impetus to share — to share information, to share patients, to share revenues, to share responsibility. With the scramble toward Meaningful Use (MU), which inherently requires exchange (sharing), we are finally seeing that the theory is much easier than the execution of that idea.1 Many large organizations are still struggling to share information

As radiation therapy becomes more sophisticated and new methods are devised for treating cancer, treatment planning systems have become an essential tool for physicians and physicists. While new features are being added to improve the functionality of various radiotherapy systems, the end goal is still the same — contouring the radiation beam to treat the cancerous tissue while minimizing exposure to any surrounding healthy tissue.
Monitoring Radiation Dose

Radiation dose continues to be one of the hottest topics in radiology, as government mandates and public concern are forcing healthcare teams to find ways to achieve the same high image quality while reducing dose. The 2014 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in December reflected those concerns, featuring sessions on the latest metrics for measuring dose and ways to keep dose down. 

It’s funny how terms catch on. Sometimes it’s the result of an innovator’s brand. No one goes out to play flying disc — we play Frisbee. Sometimes it’s the result of simplification. Everyone in healthcare knows about PACS — even when many (if not most) don’t know what exactly PACS (picture archiving and communication system) means. Then there is that instance when a term is generally used but doesn’t necessarily fit — either by innovation or by general adoption.
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