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 »

The delicacy of some crystalline molecules has led to a new X-ray technique that may eventually reduce radiation doses for human patients.

B.C. Wang, PhD, studies molecules. (He’s Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Structural Biology at the University of Georgia in Athens). X-ray crystallography—bombarding molecules’ crystalline forms with X-rays—reveals the position of chemical bonds and other important properties.

However, large molecules, … read more »

Here’s a surprising contention: Medicare has already cut spending on imaging too much.

It comes from the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), a trade group for makers of medical imaging equipment. So perhaps it’s not so surprising.

MITA said in a Wednesday news release that, according to its own analysis of Medicare data, spending on imaging for each Medicare beneficiary has … read more »

Electronic sharing of patient information among all 12 major emergency departments in the Memphis, Tennessee, area resulted in annual savings of nearly $2 million, mostly because of reduced hospital admissions, according to a study published online last week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Interestingly, the study found that electronic health information exchange (HIE) use increased some types … read more »