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Highly contoured intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) may be a successful strategy for reducing morbidity in prostate cancer treatment, as patients involved were found to have less radiotherapy related morbidity than their counterparts treated with conventional target volume margins, based on study findings published online Feb. 16 in Urology.
When added to MRI, gadolinium-based contrast agents were found to substantially enhance the malignancy criteria for primary tumor visualization, as well as increase the accuracy in the detection of lymph node metastases, according to a meta-analysis published in the February edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
A study and an accompanying editorial published in the January issue of Journal of Nuclear Medicine suggests that essential elements were missing from many oncologic PET reports and these deficiencies may render reports less helpful to referring physicians and also lead to misdiagnoses as well as cause coding and billing errors.
A whole-body PET/CT scan can detect cancer in patients with related neurologic complications more accurately than other commonly used tests, according to a study published online Jan. 11 in Archives of Neurology.
Research published in this month’s issue of Cancer suggests that early FDG-PET imaging during preoperative chemotherapy could identify patients with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer tumors who will not respond optimally to preoperative chemotherapy.
Research published in the December issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine suggests that 18F-FDG PET is a suitable routine post-treatment surveillance tool in oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma patients, between three and six months after treatment and could detect malignancy not detected by regular follow up.
Written by Chris Kaiser
Nuclear medicine has entered a new era of multimodality imaging. And the use of SPECT/CT is gaining momentum, as researchers document more clinical uses for the combination imaging.
Philips Healthcare unveiled Gemini TF PET/CT and BrightView XCT SPECT/CT scanners at the 2009 Radiological Society of North America annual conference in Chicago last week.
The success of the PET tracer FDG, along with an established and emergent worldwide PET infrastructure, is generating greater interest in the detection of tumor response to therapy, according to a review of new PET agents in the May supplement issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Since the PET national coverage determination from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) became effective, PET providers will be following the new PET coverage rules but Medicare contractors will be using the current PET claims guidance for dates of service on or after April 6, according to SNM.
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Adding whole-body PET-FDG to the pre-therapeutic conventional staging of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma improved the TNM [tumor, node and metastasis] classification of the disease and altered the management of 13.7 percent of patients, according to a study published in the February issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Regarding recent articles in the New York Times, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) in a statement acknowledged a number of rare but tragic events that occurred in the last decade involving people undergoing radiation therapy.
The Thames Valley Cancer Network--which consists of two cancer centers in Oxford, England and Reading, England, as well as several general hospitals--have recently implemented Aria for medical oncology from Varian Medical Systems.
Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals has eliminated nine positions in alignment with its plan to support the development of its oncology product candidates and to reduce operating costs.
GE Healthcare has licensed a new molecular imaging technology aimed at diagnosis of cell death in organs such as the brain and heart from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Ghent University Hospital in Ghent, Belgium, has completed its first radiotherapy treatment using RapidArc radiotherapy technology from Varian Medical Systems.
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has announced that nine radiation oncology equipment manufacturers passed at least one portion of interoperability at its third Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise–Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO) Connectathon.
Definiens, an enterprise image intelligence company, and Visage Imaging, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pro Medicus, have entered into a partnership to jointly develop and market oncology solutions for the clinical and preclinical imaging domain.
A new Center for Interventional Oncology has opened at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, dedicated to investigating cancer therapies that use imaging technology to diagnose and treat localized cancers in ways that are precisely targeted and minimally or non-invasive.
Median Technologies unveiled the new release of its Lesion Management Solutions (LMS) application at the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) this week in Vienna, Austria.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.