Federal incentive programs have been underway for just over a year to encourage adoption of electronic health records (EHR), but how this relates to radiology is not much clearer now than at the programs’ start. Part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, the programs offer Medicare/Medicaid incentives to eligible professionals and eligible hospitals for adopting certified EHR technology and utilizing that technology in a meaningful way.

Several positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents are being developed to visualize Alzheimer’s disease in the living brain to accurately diagnose patients and develop effective treatments. The only way to confirm the presence of the disease currently is by examining post-mortem samples of the patient’s brain. Experts predict these agents may soon receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance.

Speech recognition has achieved strong adoption in radiology over the past several years, as many hospitals and groups have sought to preserve the convenience and high value of narrative dictation while simultaneously streamlining their production process. The benefits have been clear and centered on improvements in reporting efficiency, namely, substantial report turnaround time reduction, cost savings and integration with picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) workflow.

Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT) for breast cancer is emerging as a newer alternative to whole-breast radiation therapy and accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI).

Estimates say up to 75 percent of patients with a pacemaker will need magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) over the course of their lifetime. Yet as the industry has long been aware, MRIs can cause a number of adverse reactions when conducted on patients with a pacemaker.