Proton therapy is a variant of conventional external beam radiation therapy or stereotactic radiosurgery. Whereas traditional radiation therapies use X-ray photons as the “ammunition” to target tumors, proton therapy uses the significantly more massive proton to try to decimate diseased tissues. From a patient benefit standpoint, there’s more to proton therapy than just “bigger bullets” targeting tumors, it is also that the collateral risks to the patient are lower.

Since it was named “Invention of the Year” by TIME magazine in 2000, positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) has been hailed as a winning combination. It captures anatomical information from the CT and functional information from the PET to create a fused image at once, reducing some of the challenges that occur in fusing two images acquired at separate times from separate modalities.

Musculoskeletal impairments are reported by more than one out of every four Americans, and in 2008 an estimated 46 million, or one in five adults, reported arthritis.1 Local injections of therapeutic agents into articular structures can lead to rapid decreases in pain and inflammation without many of the serious side effects associated with systemic medications. However, as with any diagnostic or therapeutic procedure, success depends on the expertise of the clinician and the accuracy with which the medications are injected into the affected joint space. Ultrasound is an emerging imaging modality which affords dynamic, real-time, cost-effective and physician-controlled visualization of anatomic impairments. Recent data has demonstrated that the use of ultrasound imaging improves accuracy rates in joint injections.