A shift from analog to digital equipment will push the overall Chinese X-ray market to the $1.32 billion mark by 2016, predicts the medical research company InMedica.

It says multinational suppliers, not Chinese companies, will reap most of that bonanza.

In a news release promoting a new report about the Chinese market, InMedica says shipments of analog X-ray equipment to China will … read more »

Medicare will pay for a bone-density scan every two years, so that’s how often many woman 65 or older get one. Not so fast, says a new study in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study followed 4,957 women 67 or older who did not have osteoporosis at the beginning of the study. Of the women who began with normal … read more »

The new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) will get more than $3 billion over the next decade to conduct “comparative effectiveness” research and suggest the best ways to treat various illnesses. Will anybody listen?

Don’t bet on it, suggests a Kaiser Health News article. Writer Julie Appleby cites the example of vertebroplasty—the injection of medical cement into compression fractures of the … read more »

About 23 percent of the time, an old-fashioned autopsy comes up with a new diagnosis that was missed by all of modern medicine’s amazing imaging tests and sophisticated laboratory procedures.

So why, ask two experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, should we think that the imaging-based virtual autopsy, or “virtopsy,” is ready to replace the traditional direct physical inspection … read more »

A new iron-based MRI contrast agent offers not only the benefit of safety but also a better means of differentiating  between benign and malignant tumors.

University of Pennsylvania engineers coated iron oxide nanoparticles with glycol chitosan, a sugar-based polymer that reacts to acids. The sugar keeps the particles from binding or being absorbed by the body, but this particular formulation allows … read more »

Researchers at Johns Hopkins In-Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center in Baltimore have begun a breathtaking five-year initiative to detect and treat breast, prostate, and other common cancers at their very earliest stages—when they’re hiding inside cells.

More than $8 million in grants from the National Cancer Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health) are fueling the initiative. It builds … read more »

Medicare paid $12.8 million in questionable reimbursements and $6.6 million in flatly incorrect reimbursements to portable X-ray suppliers in 2009, according to a study by inspector general of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The study, released this week, covered providers who travel to nursing facilities, private homes, and other nonclinical locations to provide X-rays of the extremities, pelvis, … read more »

Low doses of ionizing radiation may not carry as much cancer risk as we’ve thought, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

Breast-cancer researcher Mina Bissell, PhD, explained:
Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work better than at higher doses. This nonlinear DNA damage response casts … read more »

Routine MRI scans provide no benefit when given prior to epidural steroid injections, the most common procedure performed at U.S. pain clinics, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The study, published online this week in Archives of Internal Medicine (and freely available), examined treatment for sciatica at several U.S. pain clinics. Most common is an epidural steroid … read more »

Dental X-rays of bone in the lower jaw can predict which women are at future risk of fractures, according to Swedish research.

Scientists from the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy and Region Västra Götaland (Västra Götaland County) used data from the Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, which began in 1968.

Lauren Lissner, PhD, one of the study’s authors, summed up … read more »