Konica Minolta announced it will be introducing a series of new ultrasound accessories and technologies at the 2016 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, Nov. 27-Dec. 2 in Chicago.

For a long time, the ongoing joke on the floor of the McCormick Place after Thanksgiving was that RSNA stood for Real Systems Not Available. And, like all humor that lasts, there is truth to it. But that truth is changing. 

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified areas in the brains of children with Tourette's syndrome that appear markedly different from the same areas in the brains of children who don't have the neuropsychiatric disorder.

mammography

Mammography has been the gold standard for breast cancer screening ever since it was proven to reduce mortality in clinical trials in the 1960s. A 2015 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) revealed, however, that only 66.8 percent of women age 40 and over — the demographic traditionally targeted for screening — had received a mammogram in the previous two years.1 Understanding of fibroglandular breast density and its impact on cancer detection, as well as new screening guidelines that challenge conventional wisdom, are among the factors impacting compliance rates, and they suggest that screening has evolved beyond the one-size-fits-all approach of using mammography alone.
stereotactic breast imaging
stereotactic breast imaging

Recently, I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on uncovering the challenges and inefficiencies associated with stereotactic breast biopsies. In preparation, my colleagues and I spent a good deal of time reviewing patient case studies to identify a few that would best illustrate the issues related to this diagnostic procedure.
Rethinking the Radiology Business Model in the face of new healthcare economics and healthcare reform.

Healthcare spending is on the rise. According to a 2014 forecast by FMI, a market research group, total global healthcare spending will reach $52 billion by 2018 — less than two years away. Further research shows that nearly half of the money (40 percent) will be spent on equipment, an encompassing term that includes everything from beds to gurneys to imaging equipment. Radiology actually makes up the lion’s share of equipment costs, accounting for approximately 1/5 (depending on the type of facility) of total equipment expenditures, per a 2015 report from market research firm Medical Architecture Planning Systems. At the same time, it is also a major revenue driver for hospitals, with radiology expected to account for $49 billion of total global medical imaging revenue by 2020, according to BCC Research, a market research company.
Joint Commission

As healthcare continues to march forward with numerous reforms, it falls to its various accrediting bodies to set standards to guide actual progress. Radiology is subject to many such accrediting bodies, but perhaps the largest is the Joint Commission, which oversees accreditation for all healthcare specialties. The most recent updates — including changes to the survey process itself as well as the scoring system — could have a major impact on radiology departments as a whole. Judith M. Atkins, RN, MSN, president and CEO of McKenna Consulting, spoke to radiology administrators at the 2016 annual meeting of the Association for Medical Imaging Management (AHRA) to help them parse through some of the latest updates and decide how best to address them.
3-D pringing
aortic valve, CT
CT, MRI
MRI
North Shore-LIJ Health System Feinstein Institute for Medical Research

Science fiction offers a lot of ideas for creating new body parts on demand, and the advancement of 3-D printing (also called additive manufacturing) is slowly translating this idea into science fact. Today, the 3-D printed anatomic models created from patient computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or 3-D ultrasound imaging datasets are used for education and to plan and navigate difficult procedures. These models are used to teach about complex or rare cardiac or congenital conditions that up until recently could only be seen using examples extracted from cadavers. Anatomical models of rare cardiac anatomy can be printed on-demand from CT scans of surviving patients.
enterprise imaging

I doubt any of us will forget 2016. Events, both tragic and bizarre, have owned the headlines and have provided more than a little water cooler fodder. As we close another year of activity within our own world of medical imaging, we too have had plenty to talk about. From acquisitions to rebranding; from new product releases to updated vendor platforms. There was nary a week that went by without something interesting hitting my feeds. Here are some important developments that I believe are making waves and setting the course for imaging, specifically enterprise imaging, as we move further into the second half of this second decade of the 21st century.
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