Features

What’s to Gain from Strain? Experts Say Strain Echocardiography Is on the Path to Acceptance

Despite its diagnostic and prognostic value, speckle-tracking strain echocardiography is underused, some cardiac imagers say. What will it take for adoption to pick up?

AHRA 2019 Q&A: Dr. Carrino on Value, Collaboration and Putting the Patient First

With the “volume to value” movement pushing radiologists to prove their contributions to cost containment, some are feeling uneasy. After all, imaging utilization stands to be curbed—or at least eyed more closely than ever before for appropriateness.

How Secure Is That Scanner?

In a world of networked medical devices, it’s not hard to imagine a radiology-heavy cyberattack that is not only malicious but also ingenious.

The elusive economics of enterprise imaging

What should radiology be expending, in manpower as well as money, to help make medical imaging accessible to and from every clinical department? And what’s in enterprise imaging for radiology, anyway?

Seeing the Big Picture: Training Today’s Imagers to ‘Think Multimodality’

Cardiologists are receiving more exposure to different imaging modalities during their fellowships, but their job prospects and training vary widely. A more comprehensive and multimodality training approach could lead to better results.

Geoffrey A. Rose, MD, President, Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute

Pathways for Quality Care: Echocardiographers Ponder a Playbook for Imaging in Myocardial Infarction

Physicians in fields like cardiology have traditionally looked to clinical practice guidelines to help articulate the best evidence-based care for patients. The rapidly growing movement to value-based care is prompting clinicians—including echocardiographers—to carefully weigh a more focused and integrative approach to delivering consistent, quality medicine: care pathways.

$To prevent the risk of patients developing heart failure from chemotherapy agents in cancer care, patients are typically have their left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) or myocardial strain monitored using either echocardiography or equilibrium radionuclide angiography/multigated acquisition (ERNA/MUGA). If cardiac damager occurs, the treatment is discontinue or pause treatment. Cardiac imaging to assess chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity using strain echo.$

Succeeding with Cancer: Using Imaging to Avoid Treatment-induced Heart Failure

Treating today’s cancer patient no longer means simply targeting the cancer. Given the known cardiotoxicities of some established chemotherapies and the possibility that newer approaches may damage the heart, oncologists, cardiologists and imaging specialists now work together to detect and minimize the risk of treatment-induced heart failure.

Goal Reversal? Study Suggests Echocardiography Could Have an Underuse Problem

ASE says new data may be a “wake-up call” to recognize the value of echocardiography.

Radiologists need to stop using ther term "Clinically Correlate" and be more specific in reports. This term has become a joke among clinicians who see it as clinically meaningless.

If Clinically Indicated, Clinically Correlate

Radiologists are clinicians consultants. We direct clinical management based on our expert interpretation of patient images. Yet, in many cases, radiology reports may not reflect our clinical expertise. Common problems include overuse of vague terminology and omission of the impression. Addressing these flaws can go a long way toward meeting clinicians needs and improving patient care.

Cloud storage and computing is part of the Sectra enterprise imaging system at RSNA 2023. Photo by Dave Fornell #RSNA #RSNA23 #RSNA2023 #cloudstorage

Weathering the Storm: Cloud Technology & Disaster Recovery

More facilities have turned to virtualization and cloud data storage as part of the comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

CVIS: Improving Departments from Within

In the current era of healthcare reform, spawned by the funding made available in the HITECH Act of February's stimulus package, there has been much discussion about producing transparent and quantifiable data on the performance of various departments.

CVIS, Cardiology PACS Widening Image Access

For cardiology PACS, the explosion of cardiac-related advances across imaging modalities has created demand for expanded capabilities beyond simple image storage and distribution, providing physicians with access to patient-specific information related to images and reports within the facility or externally. Meanwhile, with this increased volume of image data, cardiologists also need to have access to more extensive patient data, such as hemodynamic monitoring, EKG and electronic medical record (EMR) information to create structured reports.

Around the web

Cardiovascular Business

First-in-human trial shows potential of guiding CABG with cardiac CT and AI—no ICA required

An independent heart team blinded to ICA results was able to deliver helpful guidance for CABG procedures for 99.1% of patients using just CCTA and FFR_CT alone. This approach is safe and feasible, researchers wrote, and the next step is to gather additional data.

Radiology Business

Google teams with Bayer to address radiologist burnout via AI

"Gen AI can help tackle repetitive tasks and provide insights into massive datasets, saving valuable time," Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said Tuesday.

Cardiovascular Business

Cardiology, radiology groups urge insurance provider to rethink imaging policy

SCAI and four other major healthcare organizations signed a joint letter in support of intravascular ultrasound.