Dear AuntMinnie Insider,
Our holiday Insider takes us to sunny Italy, where VC researchers have lots of patients to report on, screening thrives, and advanced visualization technology is making VC faster and more accurate than ever.
The IMPACT trial, performed in 12 centers across the country and published earlier this year, now has a computer-aided detection (CAD) arm known as CAD-IMPACT. Dr. Daniele Regge and his team used CAD on virtual colonoscopy data from more than 600 individuals to see if it would boost the performance of even expert readers -- particularly in detecting the subcentimeter lesions that are most likely to be missed. Get the early results of their efforts, unveiled at the 2009 RSNA meeting, by clicking here.
In another study from Italy, researchers from Turin-based im3D (which, incidentally, developed the software for CAD-IMPACT) wanted to know if they could predict polyp histology from lesion size and morphology on CT data -- presumably a good thing to know when you're in the business of developing CAD algorithms.
Meanwhile, studies continue to show that CAD performs better than anticipated for flat colorectal lesions, which can be difficult to visualize at VC unaided. And so it went for Dr. Franco Iafrate and his team from the University of Rome "La Sapienza." They tested CAD on individuals with flat lesions and found a pretty high detection rate. Wouldn't you know it, though -- researchers turned down a few true-positive CAD marks.
From the University of Pisa comes new confirmation that polyps don't grow inordinately during surveillance. See what Dr. Emanuele Neri and colleagues found by clicking here.
This year has brought positive developments in the U.S., too. Chief among them is the unveiling of new practice guidelines for virtual colonoscopy. The wholesale revisions clarify who should get VC and who probably should not, and also detail how it should be performed. Perhaps your particular question has been answered here.
Be sure to scroll down for more news about virtual colonoscopy. And best wishes for happy holidays!
