June 11, 2012 — An estimated 85.3 million computed tomography (CT) procedures were performed in 8,465 hospital and non-hospital sites in 2011 in the United States, representing an annual growth rate of 4 percent compared to 2010, when an estimated 81.9 million procedures were performed, according to a new survey of CT sites in the U.S. by IMV Medical Information Division.

June 8, 2012 — At this year’s SNM Annual Meeting, June 9-13, Philips Healthcare is highlighting its portfolio of nuclear medicine (NM) applications for IntelliSpace Portal, adding to its existing portfolio of CT, MR and multimodality applications. The full suite of NM applications will now offer comprehensive processing and review capabilities at a level normally reserved exclusively for dedicated NM workstations. The company will also showcase solutions designed to increase diagnostic confidence, enhance patient comfort, augment physician confidence, simplify clinical workflow and reduce lifecycle costs.

June 7, 2012 — MRI Interventions Inc. announced that the first MRI-guided brain biopsy using the company's ClearPoint System has been performed at MD Anderson in Houston, by neurosurgeon Ashwin Viswanathan, M.D., working with Sujit Prabhu, M.D. The MRI-guided brain biopsy represents the newest use of the ClearPoint System, which has already been successfully used by neurosurgeons in the United States for the insertion of electrodes and catheters in the brain.

June 7, 2012 – For those with esophageal cancer, initial staging of the disease is of particular importance as it determines whether to opt for a curative treatment or palliative treatment. Research presented in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that physicians using positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) can discern incremental staging information about the cancer, which can significantly impact management plans.

June 7, 2012 — GE Healthcare announced the acquisition of XPRO, a Brazilian Interventional X-ray equipment manufacturer company with over 15 years of experience and with more than 120 systems installed at private customer sites. Combining XPRO’s Interventional X-Ray product capabilities with GE Healthcare’s complementary imaging technology and global distribution presence, this acquisition brings a significant enhancement of offerings in Brazil while creating a broader platform that will address access and quality challenges in emerging interventional X-ray segments. Terms of this transaction were not disclosed.

June 4, 2012 — Claron Technology introduces NilFeed, an image sharing extension for its family of Nil medical image viewers that enables easy, flexible communications among unrelated sites. Nil viewers, which include both diagnostic and referring physician offerings, run within a browser on any Web-enabled device. Using NilFeed, a Nil site can now collaborate easily and securely with any external medical facility, whatever its imaging infrastructure, without setting up and maintaining a dedicated VPN connection. A remote site can upload or download a DICOM study from a Nil server using only secure HTTPS protocol.

June 4, 2012 — Two executive experts from DR Systems, a provider of healthcare information systems, will present as panel members at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society for Imaging Information in Medicine (SIIM). The conference will be held June 7-10 at the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Fla.