The University of Virginia Medical Center (U.Va) has upgraded their minimally invasive brain surgery tools by purchasing the Leksell Gamma Knife Perfexion from Elekta. With the addition, physicians hope to take advantage of the added ability to develop and deliver complex treatment plans with Perfexion’s pinpoint accuracy that allows larger doses to be concentrated on the target.

Acacia Patent Acquisition Corporation, a subsidiary of the Acacia Technologies group, a leader in technology licensing, announced its acquisition of the rights to a patent portfolio for imaging technology that stabilizes medical images for diagnostic procedures, as part of its efforts to build on the company’s licensing strategy.

According to healthcare industry officials, cutbacks in the Medicare program to freestanding imaging centers could have ill effects on Medicare patients, and possibly force some smaller imaging centers out of business. The American College of Radiology (ACR) estimates that freestanding imaging centers will lose money on 87 percent of all scans they perform on Medicare patients if the cuts remain.

MRI is now being used by doctors at the University of Kansas Hospital for fighting breast cancer. After diagnosis, MRI can be used to further determine the size and scope of the breast cancer.
Dr. William Smith and Dr. Marc Inciardi are dedicated breast radiologists at the university hospital that have been working with new software for the MRI machine designed for breast cancer patients.

A study in the July issue of Radiology reported researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston and Beneficencia Portuguesa Hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil have discovered a new cardiac MRI technique that can noninvasively demonstrate blockage of the coronary arteries yielding an accuracy of 88 percent compared to the current diagnostic standard. The research was done to try and find a noninvasive way to determine if the invasive approach is necessary.