Diagnostic Reading #36: Five “Must Read” Articles on Medical Imaging
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Resuming routine radiology care makes headlines this week.
This week’s articles in Diagnostic Reading include resuming routine radiology care during COVID-19; Walmart continues expansion into imaging industry; virtual imaging trials to help COVID-19 diagnoses; new cybersecurity protection for imaging devices; and ambiguous language impairs radiology reporting.
Resuming routine radiology care during COVID-19 – Everything Rad
The persistence of the COVID-19 virus is requiring many imaging providers to adjust operations in order to resume routine radiology care as well as attend to patients infected with COVID-19. Everything Rad asked several imaging providers around the world for their recommendations for balancing care. Read the related blog on COVID-19 challenges in radiology administration.
Walmart continues its push into imaging – Radiology Business
Walmart is continuing its push into imaging, opening its fifth health center. Located about 40 miles southwest of Atlanta, this “state-of-the-art” facility—joining three similar health centers in Georgia and one in Arkansas—offers services including X-ray and diagnostics, primary care, labs and dental, the company said. Walmart operates nine additional “Care Clinic” locations in Georgia and Texas, but those provide a shorter list of options that excludes X-ray.
Virtual imaging trials could optimize COVID-19 imaging – AuntMinnie
Researchers have created computerized models of lung abnormalities found on CT scans of patients with COVID-19, according to a study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology. With virtual imaging trials, researchers could potentially investigate and optimize the role of radiography and CT in diagnosis and follow-up of COVID-19. Radiation dose and image quality could be quantitatively optimized as well.
AI cybersecurity: a new protection for imaging devices – Diagnostic Imaging
Medical imaging devices could have a new option for cybersecurity protection that could also help eliminate human- and system-related errors. With its dual-layer architecture, this new technique can pick up on potentially dangerous instructions that are transmitted to a medical device from a host computer, according to researchers at the 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. They stated that the system can detect up to 99 percent of abnormal information in CT systems.
Vague language plagues radiology reporting – Health Imaging
Radiology reports—which should be as clear as possible to help guide patient care—may have substantial variation in how they convey diagnostic uncertainties, according to research published in the Journal of Digital Imaging. Ambiguous terms can result in poor patient care, overutilization of resources and may open up radiologists to potential litigation, according to one expert. One suggestion is that radiology should move toward more basic, universal language to remedy the problem.
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