Dear Cardiac Imaging Insider,
The recent surge of interest in cardiac imaging has been fueled in large part by advances in computed tomography. Indeed, leading cardiologists are so intrigued by the results of 64-slice cardiac CT that they've created a new cardiovascular CT society.
Multislice CT is also blamed for cooling the interest in cardiovascular imaging with electron beam CT, according to another recent story on our Web site.
But cardiac nuclear imaging has continued to be the subject of many studies of late, including a new report in Circulation that found exercise SPECT could risk-stratify elderly patients in a way that the Duke treadmill test could not.
AuntMinnie.com attended several presentations on SPECT assessment of the heart at the recent American College of Cardiology meeting in Orlando. One presentation on SPECT's identification of life-shortening ischemia in some patients with metabolic syndrome is our Insider Exclusive this week.
Hybrid SPECT/CT may hold great potential in cardiovascular imaging, according to our recent coverage from the Academy of Molecular Imaging meeting. Echocardiography is also looking more futuristic with 4D techniques that may expand detection of fetal heart anomalies.
Finally, as we go to press we're getting word of a breaking business story, with film and PACS vendor Agfa HealthCare of Greenville, SC, buying cardiac image management firm Heartlab of Westerly, RI. Check out the story by clicking here.Thanks for checking out these and our other recent stories below. As always, I welcome your feedback and story suggestions.
