Dear CT Insider,
CAD researchers are making incremental progress toward one of medicine's biggest challenges -- catching more lung cancers while they're curable.
We're highlighting a new crop of lung CAD studies in this issue's CT Insider Exclusive. Researchers from Europe and Asia examined the critical issue of nodule detection volumetry in a number of creative ways, ranging from automated versus manual measurement to the effect of different reconstruction parameters, to measurement accuracy using lossy compression. Their results are a banquet of food for thought, and there's more in the pantry for next month.
CT is well-suited to lung imaging for several reasons including its speed, sensitivity, and the benefits of inherently high contrast between lung tissue and air. But in this Insider we also explore some less common applications in which the modality is making inroads.
Among them, a new study from the American College of Cardiology meeting found that CT is faster and cheaper than the alternatives for assessing chest pain in the ER, confirming the experience of many clinicians who have come to the same conclusion.
CT is also being used more often in pregnant women when other modalities are impractical, though extreme caution is needed to minimize the fetal radiation dose, according to a discussion at this month's Society of Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance meeting in Phoenix.
Meanwhile, a study in the April Radiology finds that CT can accurately diagnose orbital inflammation arising from dental disease. Odontogenic orbital infection is an uncommon but serious disease with substantial risk of morbidity, the authors concluded.
CT is even being used in some dermatology applications, according to a report from the 2006 American Academy of Dermatology meeting in San Francisco.
Finally, a new flat-panel device even outperformed MDCT in the skull base, according to a story reported from Vienna. But these are just a smattering. We invite you to scroll through the content below to find your favorite topic in our CT Digital Community.
