or the first time in over a decade, sales of PACS have not kept pace with the market’s consistent growth. With few exceptions, most companies are finding that PACS sales have slowed considerably. Even the major vendors aren’t immune to the impact the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt) has had in this marketplace, yet most are doing a terrible job of addressing consumer fears and falling back on that old reliable — price cutting .

There are several reasons quoted when health-imaging professionals are asked why they pursue PACS administration certification such as the ones provided by the ABII and PARCA organizations. Some people just like the sense of accomplishment, which coincides with reaching a milestone requiring a lot of hard work, similar to finishing a marathon for a runner, and are happy to have the certificate on the wall in their office. Some are looking for career advancement, a raise or looking to change jobs and want to make sure that their credentials stand out amongst other candidates.

At the Yellowstone Breast Center of St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, MT, the commitment to “total quality care” encompasses two key factors: providing state-of-the-art technology and state-of-the-art patient care.

EDDA Technology offers IQQA-Chest software V2.0 featuring enterprise CAD solution for digital X-ray.
EDDA Technology offers IQQA-Chest software V2.0 featuring enterprise CAD solution for digital X-ray.

Computer-aided detection (CAD) is a valuable tool in the radiologist’s armamentarium. However, the path of technological advancement has not been without bumps in the road. Issues surrounding “the doubt” have included the effect upon false positive rates, callbacks, biopsy rates, overall detection rates, clinical decision-making and patient outcomes. For the many studies supporting the efficacy of CAD applications for breast, lung and colon, there are many others that have produced unfavorable results, casting a continued shadow of doubt over its utility.

Faster and more precise cancer treatment is one of the primary goals of radiation therapy. Until now, gaining speed has come at the expense of risking accuracy. However, new adaptive radiotherapy and radiosurgery technologies promise the best of both worlds — faster dose delivery with greater precision. But could these new techniques render respiratory gating obsolete?
New Spin on IMRT and IGRT

In healthcare there is a lot of interoperability missing. This is rooted in how data capture has been done and how data collection from legacy systems has been integrated. The true value for using service-oriented architecture (SOA) is in the sense that you can build out live and standards-based Web services that can make the integration process happen.

May 8, 2008 - Toshiba America Medical Systems installed the first AquilionONE dynamic volume CT system in the Western U.S. at Nevada Imaging Centers in Las Vegas, producing a 4D clinical video showing up to 16 cm of anatomical coverage, enough to capture the entire brain or heart, and show movement such as blood flow.

May 8, 2008 – The first human procedure using the Volcano OCT imaging catheter, which uses optical coherence tomography (OCT) designed to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of coronary and peripheral vascular disease, was performed by Patrick Serruys, M.D., at the Thoraxcenter, in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

May 7, 2008 - Using single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), researchers in The Netherlands were able to detect biochemical differences in the brains of individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia), providing evidence of a long-suspected biological cause for the dysfunction.

May 7, 2008 – Lantheus Medical Imaging initiated CaRES (Contrast Echocardiography REgistry for Safety Surveillance), a multicenter Phase IV observational study that will further evaluate the safety profile of DEFINITY Vial For (Perflutren Lipid Microsphere) Injectable Suspension in patients with suboptimal echocardiograms, to explore the safety profile of DEFINITY for which the FDA posted an alert on Oct. 10, 2007.

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