(Updated content from 2015-2017 is at the bottom of this article)

The prevalence of lung cancer in the U.S., and the world for that matter, is a major public health and economic concern. Attributed primarily to cigarette smoking, lung cancer is usually diagnosed well into the latter stages of metastasis, meaning the deadly cancerous part of the tumor has already differentiated and separated from its origin and into the bloodstream. For decades, one of the primary diagnostic imaging tools to uncover lung tumors has been a chest X-ray.

The good news is that hybrid imaging, one of the fastest-growing markets in medical imaging, is an effective tool for noninvasive disease detection, monitoring and therapy. The trouble is that many physicians cannot optimize the use of all the high-volume data generated because their workstations lack advanced visualization applications for rendering 3-D and 4-D images.

Communication is a scary thing. It divulges information that could be used against you. On the other hand, without it, we would be information silos – a term we often hear when discussing disparate PACS and EHR interoperability.
We all know by now that integrating disparate medical imaging systems is a challenge because there are information silos, and breaking down silos frequently causes an uproar of some sort.