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 »

Erroneous CT scan readings by four British Columbia radiologists in 2010 have so far contributed to at least three deaths and serious continuing harm to the health of several others, the health minister for the Canadian province announced this week.

We’ve written previously about the mess in the province, where an examination of the work of four radiologists eventually involved checking … read more »

Japan’s top mobile phone operator plans to introduce a new smartphone with three removable “jackets,” one of which will measure radiation levels.

One of the other two jackets will measure acetone in the breath and produce a reading on how hungry the user is and how fast he or she is burning fat. The third will compute the level of skin-damaging … read more »

Earlier this week, Diagnostic Imaging explored several ways in which MRI machines are becoming more patient-friendly. This comes on the heels, however, of a PLoS ONE research article that indicates they still have a way to go.

Diagnostic Imaging cited three specific improvements:

Extremity scanners, which scan ankles, wrists, and other parts of extremities more efficiently (and more cheaply) than running a … read more »

The use of CT scans to diagnose appendicitis has soared since the 1990s, according to a new study. What the study doesn’t address is whether that’s good or bad for patients.

The numbers are certainly dramatic. The study, published online August 1 in Annals of Emergency Medicine, analyzed a sample of 447,011 U.S. emergency department visits from 1992 through 2006, using … read more »

Perhaps Philips Healthcare thinks Houston is due for a plague. Philips and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute of Houston are collaborating on developing new imaging technology designed to identify the start and cause of an infectious disease epidemic.

According to a news release from The Methodist Hospital System, Philips and Methodist are creating an $8.6 million imaging suite that will study … read more »

Here’s perhaps the most startling statistic from a provocative new study about the use of CT in emergency departments: the research “suggests that almost one quarter of the total 71.7 million CTs performed in the United States in 2007 were conducted in the ED.”

Wow.

The study, published online this week in Annals of Emergency Medicine, examined 12 years of National Hospital … read more »

One way or another, a major national cost squeeze is coming to health care. A small rural hospital in Arizona shows how to prosper despite a difficult economic environment and limited resources—and one of its key strategies involves imaging.

Copper Queen Community Hospital has just 15 beds and serves Bisbee, Arizona, population 5,500. Once a copper-mining boomtown, Bisbee, according to reporter … read more »

Should radiologists worry that worldwide stocks of helium, the second-most-abundant element in the universe, are being depleted?

Yes, says Rakesh A. Shah, MD, in an opinion piece in the current issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Dr. Shah, a radiologist at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York, worries that the United States will run out of helium … read more »

Monster tornadoes slashed across northern Alabama on April 27, leaving a horror-movie scene of obliterated buildings and broken bodies — including broken young bodies.

The storms struck in the early evening, shredding some of Birmingham’s northern suburbs. (To get an idea of their malevolence — there’s no other word that fits — click here.) Minutes later, patients began flooding into Children’s … read more »