NewsPublicHealth.com : Public Health News

The Kentucky Health and Welfare Committee has rejected a prescriptive bill (SB 38) that would have required abortion providers to perform an ultrasound and offer the woman a chance to view the image before the procedure, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports (Yetter, Louisville Courier-Journal, 2/26)…

At the European Congress of Radiology (ECR ) 2010, Siemens Healthcare will be introducing their Excel Editions for computed tomography. With its favorable price/performance ratio, this new scanner family makes it easier for hospitals and practices throughout the world to enter the world of computed tomography…

MIT neuroscientists have designed a new MRI sensor that responds to the neurotransmitter dopamine, an achievement that may significantly improve the specificity and resolution of future brain imaging procedures…

Next generation technology is set to revolutionize medical imaging by enabling earlier detection of brain tumors with one scan, improving the diagnosis and therapy of cancer, and increasing patient throughput in hospitals, according to news of a pioneering UK project…

Varian Medical Systems, Inc. (NYSE: VAR), X-Ray Products, will be showcasing its full line of PaxScan® X-ray image detectors for filmless imaging at the European Congress of Radiology Annual (ECR) meeting in Vienna, Austria from March 4 – 8, 2010. Varian will also highlight X-ray tubes for fluoroscopy, angiography, cardiology and cone-beam CT imaging…

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s decision that a 2008 state law (SB1878) with several antiabortion provisions is unconstitutional because it covers more than one subject, the Oklahoman reports (Bisbee, Oklahoman, 3/4). The law would have required an ultrasound before an abortion and would limit women’s access to mifepristone, which is used in medical abortion (AP/NewsOn6…

One of the most important challenges facing hospitals and practices is the optimization of their workflows. An ever increasing amount of data from various modalities must be evaluated in less and less time. Moreover, the quality of patient care should improve and the costs for healthcare should at the same time be cut…

Using advanced tools to see the human brain at work, a new generation of marketing experts may be able to test a product’s appeal while it is still being designed, according to a new analysis by two researchers at Duke University and Emory University…

Positron Corporation (OTCBB:POSC) a molecular imaging solutions company focused on Nuclear Cardiology, announced the sale of its AttriusTM PET scanner to Ochsner Health System of Louisiana…

South London Healthcare NHS Trust is now benefiting from advanced diagnostic CT with the installation of a SOMATOM® Definition AS from Siemens Healthcare at Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup. The 64-slice CT is highly adaptable to the patient, the clinician and the task at hand. It is being used at the hospital for a range of general scanning needs, particularly oncology…

Axis Surgical Technologies, Inc., announced that it has received 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to market their C-MOR™ Visualization Device for use in diagnostic and operative arthroscopic and endoscopic procedures…

Cardiovascular death is the most common cause of mortality among Type 2 diabetics and claims the lives of millions each year, with many diabetics experiencing their first “symptom” as a heart attack or sudden death. Understanding that diabetics are at high risk for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and that many with the disease are asymptomatic, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc…

The West Virginia House Health and Human Resources Committee on Friday held a public hearing in consideration of a bill (SB 597) that would require doctors to offer women seeking abortions the opportunity to view an ultrasound image of the fetus if an ultrasound is considered the standard of care, the AP/Charleston Daily Mail reports…

Postmenopausal women, including those over 70 years old, who have been newly diagnosed with cancer in one breast have higher cancer detection rates when the other breast is scanned for tumors with MRI, compared to premenopausal women, say researchers at the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida. They found that 3…

biospace med announced today that it has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to market the Company’s sterEOS 2D/3D workstation for pediatric use in spine applications. The Company’s EOS ultra-low-dose imager previously has been FDA-cleared for use in pediatrics and adults, while sterEOS has previously been FDA-cleared for adult use in spine…

Researchers at MIT are eagerly anticipating the summer delivery of Elekta Neuromag®, a system that uses magnetoencephalography or MEG to explore brain function. MEG can detect the very weak magnetic fields arising from electrical activity in the brain, and allows researchers to monitor the timing of brain activity with millisecond precision…

TechniScan, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: TSNI) (”TechniScan” or the “Company”), a medical device company engaged in the development and commercialization of an automated breast ultrasound imaging system, announced that it has commenced phase two of its grant study at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Moores Cancer Center…

In a case believed to be a United States first, the radiology team at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has used prenatal magnetic resonance imaging to detect an often-misdiagnosed genetic disease. The disorder, congenital chloride diarrhea, can cause severe dehydration and serious metabolic disturbances in newborns if not treated quickly…

Aided by ultrasound guidance, treating tumors with extreme heat or moderate heat may provide a possible therapeutic option, according to early research presented at the second AACR Dead Sea International Conference on Advances in Cancer Research: From the Laboratory to the Clinic, held March 7-10, 2010…

New preliminary data from a pilot study in the Netherlands indicates that imaging tools may help address the most challenging clinical dilemma of prostate cancer care as identified by the hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and its expert witnesses last week: to treat or not treat, AdMeTech Foundation’s President and CEO Dr. Faina Shtern said today…

The West Virginia House Health and Human Resources Committee on Monday voted 16-9 to approve a bill (HB 4517) that would require physicians to give women the opportunity to view an ultrasound image at least one hour before performing an abortion, the Charleston Gazette reports. According to the Gazette, the rule would only apply to cases where ultrasound technology already is being used…

Entirely different signal paths and parts of the brain are involved when you try to remember something and when you just happen to remember something, prompted by a smell, a picture, or a word, for instance. This is shown by Kristiina Kompus in her dissertation at UmeÃ¥ University in Sweden. Imagine you are asked to remember what you were doing exactly one week ago…

The West Virginia House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill (HB 4517), including two new amendments, that would alter an existing state abortion law by requiring that that women be able to view an ultrasound image of their fetus before an abortion, the Charleston Daily Mail reports (Rivard, Charleston Daily Mail, 3/11)…

TechniScan, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: TSNI) is featured on NVIDIA’s recently posted blog about speeding the amount of time it takes to get breast imaging results into the hands of doctors and patients. NVIDIA is the world leader in visual computing technologies and inventor of the graphics processing unit (GPU)…

Solutions for driving productivity and realising process efficiencies in healthcare will be showcased at the Siemens stand at this year’s Annual Meeting of the British Nuclear Medicine Society (BNMS). From 26 – 28 April at Harrogate International Centre, visitors to stand 2 will learn how imaging technology and new software innovations are transforming the diagnostic environment…

Doses of radiation from commonly performed computed tomography (CT) scans vary widely, appear higher than generally believed and may contribute to an estimated tens of thousands of future cancer cases, according to two reports in the December 14/28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced publication of a final regulation on current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) for the production of positron emission tomography (PET) drugs, as well as a guidance document describing acceptable approaches that would enable PET drug producers to meet the requirements in the proposed regulation…

Researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have created a single nanoparticle that can be tracked in real time with MRI as it homes in on cancer cells, tags them with a fluorescent dye and kills them with heat…

Recognizing the need for programs that improve patient safety and quality care, AHRA: The Association for Medical Imaging Management and Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. announced the six recipients of the second annual Putting Patients First grant program…

FDA researchers have found that certain cardiac pacemakers may inadequately stimulate a patient’s heart while undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan due to the magnetic pulses mixing with the electronic pulses from the pacemaker…

Scientists from the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have discovered a possible way for malignant breast tumors to be identified, without the need for a biopsy. The findings were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine…

Sometimes, a simple bedside exam performed by a skilled physician is superior to a high-tech CT scan, a Loyola University Health System study has found. Researchers found that physicians’ bedside exams did a better job than CT scans in predicting which patients would need to return to the operating room to treat complications such as bleeding…

Springer and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) have founded a new journal Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology (CVET). CVET is a forum for research on all aspects of cardiovascular physiology and medical treatment…

In a new study published in the January issue of Radiology, 42 percent of women eligible for breast cancer screening with MRI declined to undergo the procedure. “Given that MRI is promoted as a very sensitive test to identify early breast cancer, we were surprised that barely half of women at increased risk for breast cancer would undergo MRI even when offered at no cost,” said Wendie A…

A panel of experts at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has issued a statement calling for an open discussion of the facts about radiation hazards from computed tomography (CT) scanning in light of recent public concerns and news reports about radiation dose…

Dilon Diagnostics announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) clearance for its lesion-localization system for molecular imaging biopsy guidance. GammaLoc(®), pronounced “gamma-loke”, is a complementary technology to Dilon’s cornerstone product, the Dilon 6800(®) Gamma Camera…

On the morning of December 17, 2009, UPMC physicians used Gamma Knife® surgery to treat the center’s 10,000th patient, an 81-year-old male with a tumor deep in his brainstem, a site where traditional surgery would have been impossible…

Members of a Syracuse University research team have shown that an obscure phenomenon called stochastic resonance (SR) can improve the clarity of signals in systems such as radar, sonar and even radiography, used in medical clinics to detect signs of breast cancer. It does this by adding carefully selected noise to the system…

Imaging is at the heart of diagnostic procedures in cardiology. The idea of publishing an ESC Textbook of Cardiovascular Imaging which accumulates the expertise of European cardiovascular imagers, is therefore long awaited…

FONAR Corporation (NASDAQ: FONR), The Inventor of MR Scanning, announced today that the Center for Diagnostic Imaging (CDI) (Minneapolis, MN) has purchased a third FONAR UPRIGHT® Multi-Position™ MRI. It is scheduled to be installed in CDI’s OpenScan MRI center in Duluth, Minnesota, replacing the current low-field open-sided MRI scanner in that center…

Computed tomography (CT), a highly accurate, readily available medical imaging technique, is the overwhelmingly preferred technique of emergency physicians and radiologists for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism (PE), according to a study in the January issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology…

Ultrasound-guided cortisone injections may be an effective treatment method for gluteus medius tendinopathy, a common, painful condition caused by an injury to the tendons in the buttocks that typically affects middle-aged to elderly women and young active individuals, according to a study published in the January issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology…

A large multicenter international trial found that the image quality of multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) scans, used for the noninvasive detection of coronary artery disease, can be significantly affected by patient characteristics such as ethnicity, body mass index (BMI), and heart rate, according to a study in the January issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology…

Women’s Digital Imaging of Ridgewood (WDI), has begun using Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA), a technology developed to screen for osteoporosis (bone loss), to measure body fat in patients who want a more accurate method of establishing goals and measuring results for weight management and fitness programs…

A novel molecular imaging technology aimed at rapid diagnosis of cell death in organs such as the brain and heart has been licensed by The Medical College of Wisconsin to GE Healthcare. Under the license GE will further evaluate and develop the technology and will have an option to commercialize the technology…

Current use of prenatal ultrasounds in women with singleton pregnancies is 55% greater than in 1996, even in low-risk pregnancies. More than one-third (37%) of pregnant women now receive 3 or more ultrasound tests in the second and third trimesters of a given pregnancy, found an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)…

The new recommendations from the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) and the American College of Radiology (ACR) on breast cancer screening, published in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR), state that breast cancer screening should begin at age 40 and earlier in high-risk patients…

A new type of brain scan, called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), appears to be better at detecting whether a person with memory loss might have brain changes of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published in the January 6, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology…

US scientists have developed a “cocktail” of nanoparticles that work together in the bloodstream to seek, stick to and kill cancer tumors…

Use of technology that expands access to the most qualified radiologist will lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, said MedSolutions, a leading provider of medical cost management services. MedSolutions is speaking out in the wake of controversy surrounding recent recommendations from the U.S…