When volumetric scanning came along a few years ago, proponents hawked the technology as a leap forward in efficiency and accuracy. Simply sweeping the entire heart would ensure the capture of every bit of data needed to make an accurate diagnosis, allowing the patient to head home, while the next hopped up on the table. It kindled expectations of an echocardiographic nirvana with unprecedented reproducibility regardless of the sonographer’s skills, skyrocketing throughput and off-the-chart revenues. Reality has fallen a tad short.
September 23, 2011 – Increasing magnetic resonance (MR) exam efficiency, Toshiba America Medical Systems’ advanced M-Power interface has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance. M-Power is a customizable MR system user interface that enables technologists to streamline and accelerate scanning processes and enhance diagnoses. M-Power will be available for use on Toshiba’s Vantage Atlas, Vantage Titan 1.5 and Titan 3.0T MR systems with an upgrade path for those systems already installed.
September 23, 2011 – Zotec Partners, a medical billing, practice management and radiology information systems (RIS) software and services company, announced it has received a multi-year contract extension from Radiology Associates of North Texas, formerly Radiology Associates of Tarrant County.
Fujifilm’s APERTO Lucent is a 0.4T mid-field, open MRI system addressing today’s capability and image quality needs ...
September 23, 2011 — Hologic Inc. announced that Rob Cascella, company president and CEO, will preside over the NASDAQ stock market opening bell ceremony marking the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The ceremony will begin at 9:15 a.m. (ET) on Oct. 3, 2011.
September 23, 2011 – Traditionally in computed tomography (CT), there has been an undesirable trade-off between image quality and low radiation dose levels. While high CT image quality often required greater patient exposure to diagnostic radiation, lower dose levels for the patient usually meant lower image clarity from higher noise and more artifacts.
SPONSORED CONTENT — Fujifilm’s latest CT technology brings exceptional image quality to a compact and user- and patient ...
September 23, 2011 – GE Healthcare announced the availability of HDlive and Volume Speckle Reduction Imaging (SRI) for women’s health imaging products within its Voluson Expert series platform. These innovations are being showcased for the first time in the United States at the 2011 International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG) congress, Sept. 18-22 in Los Angeles.
SPONSORED CONTENT — Fujifilm’s latest CT technology brings exceptional image quality to a compact and user- and patient ...
September 23, 2011 – Virtual Radiologic (vRad), a technology-enabled radiology practice, announced a global charitable initiative to provide pro bono diagnostic radiology services to the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
September 23, 2011 — Bionix Radiation Therapy announced the addition of Breath Hold, an interactive breath hold control monitoring system from MedSpira, as an accessory to its Omni V Patient Positioning System.
September 23, 2011 ? National Services Scotland (NSS) has commenced a major picture archive and communications system (PACS) upgrade program, strengthening its successful relationship with Carestream Health with the signing of a change control notice (CCN) to the current contract held between the two organizations.
SPONSORED CONTENT — EnsightTM 2.0 is the newest version of Enlitic’s data standardization software framework. Ensight is ...
The space needed and costs involved to create a hybrid operating room (OR) for a specific speciality may not be feasible, especially at mid-sized hospitals. This was the case at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Conn., where the facility wanted to increase procedural volume, but needed to upgrade its small operating rooms for vascular, endovascular, laparoscopic and endoscopic procedures.
One of the biggest trends is the creation of hybrid operating rooms (ORs) that bring together the best of both surgical and interventional technologies. They are centered around a high-quality angiographic X-ray imaging system, allowing new collaborative treatment strategies and new types of procedures. Users say the shift to hybrid ORs is more than a change of venue for procedures, it is a paradigm shift in medicine.
September 20, 2011 — Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc. will highlight its Aquilion One computed tomography (CT) system at the American Society of Emergency Radiology (ASER) conference, Sept. 14-17, 2011 in Miami. The company will specifically showcase the system’s application in an emergency department (ED) setting.
Did you know that approximately one-third of all the data in world is created by the healthcare industry and that ...
September 20, 2011 – Varian Medical Systems and Calypso Medical Technologies announced they have signed a definitive agreement under which Varian will acquire Calypso, a privately owned, Seattle-based developer and supplier of specialized products and software for real-time tumor tracking and motion management during radiosurgery and radiotherapy. The acquisition, which is anticipated to close in early October subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions, provides that Varian will pay approximately $10 million for Calypso plus potential earnouts based on unit sales of Calypso products achieved beyond thresholds over the next 30 months.
September 20, 2011 – A national survey found that women overwhelmingly want the option for additional screening tests to find cancer early, even when testing resulted in a false positive – a suspicious area found by biopsy to be non-cancerous. Nine out of 10 women who required a biopsy to determine a false positive indicated that they would still opt for the additional screening the following year.
SPONSORED CONTENT — EnsightTM 2.0 is the newest version of Enlitic’s data standardization software framework. Ensight is ...
September 20, 2011 – RaySearch Laboratories AB has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with the Italian distributor Tecnologie Avanzate T.A. S.r.l. based in Torino, Italy. The agreement means that Tecnologie Avanzate will be fully responsible for marketing, sales and service for RaySearch’s proprietary treatment planning system RayStation on the Italian market.
September 20, 2011 – Carestream’s innovative Vue Motion zero-footprint, Web-based enterprise viewer enables convenient on-demand access to imaging data and patient information by clinicians anytime, anywhere. This viewer’s support of mobile devices such as Apple iPads and tablet PCs is pending U.S Food and Drug administraion (FDA) clearance in the United States but is available in other countries worldwide.
September 20, 2011 – The Carestream Vue radiology information systems (RIS) meets the first phase of meaningful use requirements in the United States. This flexible platform allows data workflows to be quickly and easily adapted to meet changing business and regulatory needs worldwide.
Carestream recently enhanced its established portfolio of Vue for cloud-based services that includes picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), archiving and collaborative information sharing. A new portal service allows healthcare facilities to quickly and easily share images and information with any authorized physician. This facilitates obtaining secondary opinions from specialists and sharing diagnoses with referring physicians.Healthcare providers can also use the portal to allow patients to securely access their own medical information. Carestream’s fully featured PACS and vendor-neutral archiving cloud services allow providers to achieve affordable and predictable costs while ensuring business continuity and security.The archiving service delivers consolidated data storage and management solution for any data type, regardless of vendor. It converts proprietary image data into a vendor-neutral format that preserves data integrity and streamlines data sharing among authorized users and facilities.For more information: www.carestream.com
September 19, 2011 — USARAD.com LLC announced the introduction of Radiology-On-Demand RadStore, a long-term image storage solution available at no or low cost to all new and existing clients.
September 19, 2011 — Trig Medical Inc. announced its participation at the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology’s (ISUOG) 21st World Congress on Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology, September 18-22 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.