McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) and Per-Se Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:PSTI) announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement under which McKesson will acquire Per-Se. Per-Se is a leading provider of financial and administrative healthcare solutions for hospitals, physicians and retail pharmacies. Under the terms of the agreement, McKesson will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Per-Se for $28.00 per share in cash.


New whole-body imaging techniques are widening the scope of vision into the details of biological function. By using whole-body PET/CT, scientists are tracking immune system cellular activity in real time. Simultaneously, investigators are optimistic about advances in whole-body MRI, where MR improves the ability to identify metastatic spread and MR angiography has proven instrumental in detecting carotid and peripheral vascular disease.
PET/CT Captures Cells in Real Time
The Precedence SPECT/CT system from Philips Medical Systems
The Precedence SPECT/CT system from Philips Medical Systems

In the past, nuclear medicine had been coined “unclear medicine” by cynics because of its inability to target exactly where disease is located in the body. The uncertainty was not in the ability of functional imaging to determine a problem, but in localization.

In a study by Dr. Jean-Yves Douillard of the Centre Rene Gauducheau in St. Herblain, France, and colleagues in Italy and Spain, researchers found that adding a course of radiation to chemotherapy doubled the lives of some lung cancer patients.
The survey tested 840 patients with stage three lung cancer, which had spread to lymph nodes outside the lung, but not throughout the body. Of these, 232 agreed to extra radiation treatment.

Researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago will present results at ASTRO from a study found that holographic imaging has significant potential to achieve better quality in radiation treatment planning.

Siemens Medical Solutions has announced the latest in ultrasound imaging with the 4.0 release for its ACUSON Antares ultrasound system, premium edition and will exhibit it at RSNA 2006. This solution will feature shared service cardiology applications, along with the complete range of general imaging applications and advanced clinical applications, such as 3-D/4-D and contrast agent imaging.

Canon Medical Systems will exhibit its newest digital radiography (DR) systems at RSNA, the Canon CXDI-50C Portable DR System and Canon CXDI-40EC Premium DR System. The Canon CXDI-50C system features a 14-by-17-inch image area with the LANMIT 7 (Large Area New-MIS Sensor and TFT) detector technology, and delivers high-quality diagnostic images with minimal X-ray exposure to patients. The Canon CXDI-40EC system has 17-by-17-inch imaging area for capturing all X-ray images without the need to adjust detector orientation.

BRIT will launch its multimodality mammography workstation, BRIT Vision and new reporting features for Roentgen RIS at RSNA 2006.
BRIT Vision is for use with any FDA-cleared full-field digital mammography system or with digitized film from a film-screen system. The tools developed for mammography will be made available in all other BRIT Systems diagnostic viewers.

Emageon 's version 5.30 marks a fundamental architectural change with regard to eliminating the need for routing and use of JPEG 2K storage, resulting in improved compression on disk storage.

At RSNA 2006, GE will release Centricity PACS version 3.0, which is designed to help hospitals and imaging centers improve efficiency.
New IHE profiles within version 3.0 automate exam acquisition, reporting and communication for referring physicians. New customers will have an updated LINUX architecture available, while current Centricity customers can also implement version 3.0 within their existing infrastructure.

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