If your enterprise is similar to most current hospital health information technology (HIT) architecture, you have clinical/data silos everywhere. This is nothing to be ashamed of; you are normal. But in the coming age of healthcare delivery, silos must be replaced with interoperability. One key to interoperability will be an integrated medical image archive.

Once an emerging technology confined to early adopters, server-based advanced visualization has gradually become a more popular solution in the medical imaging informatics marketplace in the last few years. This has carried on to the point that it can today be deemed the de facto standard for advanced visualization in medical imaging enterprises.

Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is an investigational radiotherapy modality for the treatment of localized prostate cancer. Conventional radiotherapy options include prolonged schedules of daily treatment using relatively low radiation doses over a period of six to nine weeks. SBRT offers promise of an expedient, well-tolerated and effective schedule of only five treatments of larger doses for selected patients for whom current conventional treatment options would be either medically contraindicated or refused by the patient for reasons of inconvenience.

As the year draws to a close, ITN asked a few industry veterans to share their views about current issues shaping medical imaging today and what they foresee for the industry in 2012. Following are their responses to our Q&A.

We are at an inflection point with many aspects of medicine, not the least of which concerns choosing the correct tool to discover and manage coronary artery disease. The American landscape of clinical and imaging service providers is going through a major reshuffle. Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) is growing in utilization, taking its place as an established modality with AHA-, ACC- and ACR society-derived appropriate use standards. However, this growth in CT utilization and the resultant growth in per capita radiation exposure have elevated a very public debate about the risk of causing cancer versus the value of its information content.

November 21, 2011 — The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care has released an updated guideline for breast cancer screening in average-risk women aged 40 to 74, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The new guideline, which weighs the potential harms of false positives and unnecessary biopsies against the potential benefits of breast cancer screening in average risk women, updates prior guidelines by the Task Force from 1994 and 2001 and recommends against routine screening for women under age 50.