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.