Dear PACS Insider,
In today's environment where concerns over radiation dose are paramount, it's critical to keep a close eye on patient exposure. But legacy CT scanners often present radiation dose data in a way that's not conducive to automated analysis.
One of a number of projects to tackle this problem is under way at the University of Southern California, where Dr. Phillip Cheng has developed a system that acquires and decodes dose information from his institution's PACS and incorporates it into a database for data mining and monitoring.
Its entire retrieval, decoding, database, and analysis processes are run completely from a USB flash drive when connected to a PACS workstation.
Learn more in this month's Insider Exclusive, which you can access before the rest of our AuntMinnie.com members by clicking here.
In other articles we're featuring this issue, a PACS add-on developed by Thomas Jefferson University has proved to be useful in managing discrepancies between preliminary reads by residents and final interpretations by attending radiologists. Learn how and why by clicking here.
And associate editor Cynthia E. Keen reports on how radiology is making its case for better representation in stage 2 of the U.S. government's meaningful use IT stimulus program. Speaking of radiology and meaningful use, consultant Michael J. Cannavo shares his perspective in part 7 of his popular Building a Better PACS series, which you can access here.
In other news, recent research found that successful imports of patient images from CDs into PACS led to lower subsequent image utilization. Get the details here.
And, Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing technology has also attracted interest in medical imaging applications. A team from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto has adapted Kinect to allow surgeons to view and manipulate images within the patient's sterile field in the operating room.
Finally, were you able to visit our PACS in an Age of Change Spring Edition virtual conference yesterday? If not, you can view all the presentations on demand for the next three months -- just go to pacsspring.auntminnie.com. If you did attend, thanks for coming; we hope you found it informative.
Do you have a topic you'd like to see covered in your PACS Digital Community, or are you interested in submitting an article to AuntMinnie.com? Please feel free to drop me a line.
