Like Superman, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers can see through walls.

Well, not exactly like Superman. The researchers don’t have X-ray vision. Instead, they have a portable radar device that can produce real-time video showing any movement on the other side of a solid concrete wall.

And, again unlike Superman, the device doesn’t capture clear pictures through the wall. … read more »

Self magazine slams teleradiology in an article posted on the magazine’s Web site and the MSNBC site.

The magazine headline reads “The Hidden Dangers of Outsourcing Radiology.” The subhead elaborates: “That scan of your brain, bones or breasts you got last Tuesday? It might have been read by someone who isn’t a doctor and lives 12 time zones away. If, that … read more »

The X PRIZE Foundation is planning to offer $10 million for the creation of a sort of super-imaging device—but one that aims to bypass radiologists, and for that matter all other health-care professionals.

The foundation, launched in 1995 and based in Playa Vista, California, became famous for the Ansari X PRIZE, offered in 1996 by its founder, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. It … read more »

A patient shuffles into the emergency department, presenting with a minor injury or vague complaint of pain. The next step would be “please take a seat and wait until we call your name,” right?

Not at the Issaquah Campus of Swedish Medical Center, just east of Seattle. There’s no seat to take, because there’s no waiting room. Nor is there a … read more »

A PET heart agent generator, recalled in July after two patients set off radiation detectors at the U.S. border, may be back on the market early next year.

CardioGen-82, the generator, produces rubidium-82 chloride injections, used for PET myocardial perfusion studies. The rubidium has a half-life of 76 seconds.

But in June, two patients set off sensitive radiation detectors at U.S. borders … read more »

As part of the final resolution of a 2007 medical malpractice suit filed by a semiparalyzed Florida woman, a radiologist was dismissed from the suit.

The case involved Sheila Matthews, now 61, of East Naples in southwest Florida. According to the Naples Daily News, in March 2005, she walked to an ambulance she had called because of shortness of breath and … read more »

His handcuffs removed for an MRI, a jail inmate bolted for freedom through a Denver-area imaging clinic full of patients. He made it almost to the front door before being fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy.

It happened at 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday at Advanced Medical Imaging in Golden, Colorado. Authorities said the inmate, Jesus Octavio Aguilar, 28, had recently pleaded … read more »

Virtual Radiologic’s big acquisition last year of NightHawk Radiology has yielded mixed results for both entities, according to a new report on the teleradiology market from the health-care research company KLAS.

You can purchase the report, titled Teleradiology Services 2011: Times are Changing, here—for $980 if you’re a provider, $11,980 if you’re not. (We don’t know how many nonproviders will pay … read more »

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) this week suggested that Medicare require prior authorization of “potentially harmful and costly technologies with a high risk of overuse or misuse, such as advanced imaging services.”

Says a BCBSA report titled “Building Tomorrow’s Healthcare System”:
Private Radiology Benefit Managers have demonstrated success in the private sector and could make a substantial impact in … read more »

MRI-safe pacemakers? As far as the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is concerned, all pacemakers are MRI-safe.

OK, we’re exaggerating. But apparently not by much. Cardiologists at Johns Hopkins say they’ve developed a protocol that has allowed safe MRI scans of patients with pacemakers and defibrillators—older devices, not the new MRI-safe models.

A study published in the October 4 issue of … read more »