Years ago in Vegas I came face-to-face with the strain of radiology. On-site, at an imaging practice built around managed care, I sat from 9 in the morning until 7 that night observing (as unobtrusively as possible) a radiologist. At day's end he retreated to his office, dragging me with him for a recap of the day, his eyes puffy and bloodshot.

With radiology departments generating so much imaging data on a daily basis, and as medical imaging technology continues to advance, many existing picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and other storage solutions simply do not have the capacity to handle multiple terabytes of data on-site. As a result, hospitals and other healthcare organizations are turning to cloud solutions. It is a buzzword that many are familiar with, but one that many still do not fully understand.

Molecular imaging is a broad and dynamic field that encompasses a range of image technologies that allow physicians and researchers to noninvasively visualize biological processes at the cellular and molecular level. Currently, the vast majority of clinical applications of molecular imaging use radiolabeled compounds (radiopharmaceuticals) that are detected with gamma cameras, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) or positron emission tomography (PET), depending on the type of radioactivity used. Molecular imaging techniques typically complement more anatomic-based imaging modalities such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and hybrid imaging modalities including SPECT/CT, PET/CT and more recently PET/MRI are available for clinical use. Together, multimodality molecular imaging can more accurately localize and characterize disease processes than either modality alone.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced its latest efforts in supporting the Bonn Call for Action on radiation protection.

In recent years, there has been widespread media coverage of studies purporting to show that radiation from X-rays, computed tomography (CT) scans and other medical imaging causes cancer. But such studies have serious flaws, including their reliance on an unproven statistical model, according to a recent article in the journal Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment. Corresponding author is Loyola University Medical Center radiation oncologist James Welsh, M.D., MS.