Diagnostic Reading #12: Five “Must Read” Articles on HIT and Radiology

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Dose reduction and new ultrasound application make headlines.

Diagnostic Reading summary includes: new technique uses ultrasound to measure fluid in the lungs; monitoring software that can reduce dose for pediatric patients; a “digital pathologist” can improve cancer detection; variation in imaging utilization impacts practicing radiologists; and a decade of improvements in CT innovation are not reaching patients in some European countries.

Fluid in the lungs being measured by a new technique using ultrasound – Health Imaging

Medical researchers and engineers from North Carolina State University have found a new approach that uses ultrasound to measure fluid levels in the lungs. The noninvasive approach can track progress in treating pulmonary edema, which is common in patients with congestive heart failure.

Monitoring software enables pediatric dose reduction – AuntminnieEurope

The combination of dose-monitoring software and continuing education for technologists can produce quantifiable reductions in radiation dose delivered to pediatric patients from conventional radiography studies,according to research presented at ECR 2017. After implementing a centralized dose monitoring system for six hospitals in Madrid and providing additional education for radiographers on important dose optimization topics, a Spanish group achieved average radiation dose reductions ranging from 8% to 20% depending on the type of examination.

Google develops ‘digital pathologist’ to improve cancer detection – Clinical Innovation+Technology

Diagnosing cancer involves pathologists reviewing tissue samples. Still, variability among pathologists can complicate the process and result in misdiagnoses. To address such variability, Google announced a new algorithm to detect breast cancer as well as or even better than a pathologist. The automated detection algorithm was trained using images of metastasized breast cancer that spread to lymph nodes. The algorithm, which included customization to examine images at varying magnifications, achieved a localization score of 89 percent. This score was significantly higher than the 73 percent by a pathologist with no time limit.

County-level variation in imaging utilization impacts practicing radiologists – Radiology Business

Imaging utilization in the U.S. varies more at the county level than at the state level, according to a study published in the JACR. In addition, researchers found poor ratings for income and insurance coverage correlated with higher imaging utilization, which was a surprise. This means radiologists and practicing physicians might be expected to deliver optimal outcomes for a higher-risk population than originally anticipated.

Gap widens between CT innovation and installation – AuntMinnieEurope

The latest CT offerings provide greatly improved imaging capability, automatic dose-monitoring with smart dose protocols, much quicker scan speeds, and a wider range of systems to cater for all provider types. It continues also to be merged with other modalities (PET/CT, CT-interventional X-ray labs). However patients in many European countries are not benefitting from these advances because hospitals have CT systems that are over 10 years old and the latest generation of CT is not being widely adopted.

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