February 3, 2020 — Oxygen in cancer tumors is known to be a major factor that helps radiation therapy be successful. Hypoxia, or starvation of oxygen, in solid tumors is also thought to be an important factor in resistance to therapy. However, it is difficult to monitor tumor oxygenation without invasive sampling of oxygen distributions throughout the tissue, or without averaging across the whole tumor, whereas oxygen is highly heterogenous within a tumor.

February 3, 2020 — Melding the genetic and cellular analysis of tumors with how they appear in medical images could give physicians and other cancer therapy specialists new insights into how to best treat patients, especially those with brain cancer, according to a new study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope.

It is not that smart algorithms will one day become too smart, as some fear; not that smart machines will one day overshadow human intellect. Rather the danger is that artificial intelligence (AI) machines are viewed by people as more impartial than they are; that their decisions are more objective than those of people. They are not.

HIPAA Regulations
Carol Amick

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), about 70 percent of organizations are not compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA mandates industry-wide standards for healthcare information and electronic billing, and requires protection as well as confidential handling of protected health information.
Advances in Mammography, Breast imaging.
Barbara Smith

Women in the United States have a 1 in 8 (or about 13 percent) lifetime risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime. Death rates from breast cancer have been decreasing since 1989, and these decreases are thought to be the result of treatment advances, earlier detection through screening and increased awareness.1 The health community continues to strive for early detection of lesions — primarily through screening mammography, which is the most effective method for detecting early breast cancers and has been shown to reduce breast cancer-specific mortality.

The electronic transmission of patient images, when done cost effectively, efficiently and instantaneously, can help expand services of the provider; it can even change the culture of patient care, according to imaging administrators who described their daily experiences in an ITN webinar.

Tyna Callahan

In healthcare, critical systems are being used to deliver vital information and services 24/7/365. Clinicians demand easy, always-on access to patient data; the quality of care can suffer if data is unavailable or slow to retrieve. As healthcare relies more and more heavily on digital, connected equipment and imaging systems, the volume of data is growing at an accelerating pace. Combine that accelerating data growth with long data retention requirements, and it is easy to see why healthcare executives are concerned about storage.
While electronic medical record systems have helped consolidate most patient data into one location, medical imaging IT systems has proved to be more difficult to replicate by large EMR vendors. This has made room in the market for third-party radiology IT vendors that allow easy integration with the larger EMRs like Epic and Cerner. This image shows Agfa's enterprise imaging system, leveraging its ability to be accessed anywhere with internet connection and pull images from radiology and surgery.

The growing influence and uptake of electronic medical records (EMRs) in healthcare has driven debate over the future role of specialist clinical and diagnostics software. With interoperability in the healthcare sector still a major challenge, many health providers are looking to simplify their information technology (IT) systems, consolidating to fewer software platforms and few vendor partners.
RSNA 2019
Highlighted region (red) includes signs of pneumothorax on a chest radiograph enhanced by a smart algorithm embedded in GE Healthcare’s Edison Open AI Orchestrator. (CE mark version of software; not commercially available in United States). Screenshot by Kirk Graczyk
Vendor executives and users described new technologies at the Innovation Theater on the South Hall exhibit floor of RSNA 2019. Photo by Greg Freiherr
An algorithm developed by MaxQ identifies a CT slice image with signs of a suspected acute intracranial hemorrhage. GE Healthcare is integrating the algorithm and other smart software from third-party vendors into its Edison Open AI Orchestrator. Screenshot courtesy of GE Healthcare
During RSNA 2019, some vendors explained from a stage in the AI Showcase how radiology performance can improve with the help of smart algorithms.
Philips Healthcare underscored the value of a turnkey system in enterprise imaging with the showcasing at RSNA 2019 of its IntelliSpace AI Workflow Suite. The work-in-progress is designed to integrate AI applications into imaging workflow.
A smart algorithm from Siemens Healthineers analyzes and quantitates measurements in chest CT images.
Agfa Healthcare built AI into the latest version of its mobile X-ray system, dubbed the DR 100 S.
A mobile head CT, the Somatom On.site, is designed to avoid costly and potentially risky patient transport by allowing bedside scans.

The founder of Gonzo journalism thought back nostalgically to what many believed in the 1960s was inevitable. The triumph of right over wrong. Of good over evil. A political revolution in the United States.
Figure A: CT scan of a coronavirus from a patient in China showing ground glass lesions in the lungs. Images courtesy of the Radiological Society of North America. For larger images and more details on the scan, view the original article at https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2020200236

January 31, 2020 — One of the first imaging studies on the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was published online today as radiologists scramble to find out how the virus presents in medical imaging. In just 30 days after the virus first appeared in China, it has spread to more than 8,200 confirmed cases and more than 170 deaths. Cases are now being reported in several countries, including the United States and Canada. 
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