Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, may be detected and monitored more effectively in the future with positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), according to research published in the May issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Typically assessed by endoscopic and histologic evaluations, investigators demonstrated the ability of PET/CT to identify lesions along the complete intestinal wall that could be missed with traditional imaging techniques.

Breast brachytherapy with a strut-based applicator demonstrated low recurrence rates and minimal toxicities, according to a multi-site study with a median follow-up of four years. The research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Brachytherapy Society, held in New Orleans, April 18-20, 2013.

Accuray has voluntarily implemented a recall of two separate components from its CyberKnife product line: the Iris Variable Aperture Collimator and the RoboCouch Patient Positioning System. The affected parts are manufactured by third-party suppliers and are being removed from the system because they failed to meet the company's specifications and standards for quality. The company has notified impacted customers, and field service personnel have been deployed to apply the corrections should they be necessary. These recalls exclude the CyberKnife M6 Series.

Navidea Biopharmaceuticals Inc. announced the peer-reviewed publication of results from a clinical trial of NAV4694 in healthy subjects and those with diagnosed forms of dementia. The trial assessed the performance of Navidea’s Fluorine-18 labeled amyloid imaging candidate, NAV4694, in a head-to-head comparison with the acknowledged benchmark, gold-standard amyloid imaging agent, 11C-labeled Pittsburgh Compound-B (PiB). Results demonstrated that NAV4694 displayed imaging characteristics nearly identical to those of PiB and the authors believe these results show that NAV4694 may be useful in the early and differential diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The study, “Head-to-Head Comparison of 11C-PiB and 18F-AZD4694 (NAV4694) for ?-Amyloid Imaging in Aging and Dementia,” was published in the current online edition of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and will appear in the June print edition.

According to a new survey by Etiam, hospitals see a significant need for an organized system to manage the sizable flow of medical images many receive from beyond the enterprise. Hospitals also expressed concern about the security of the cloud, which increasingly plays a role in cross-enterprise access to this patient data.

Two-dimensional plus 3-D breast imaging increases cancer detection rates by 11 percent, and could be particularly useful in detecting cancer in women with dense breasts, a new study suggests.