Dear AuntMinnieEurope Member,
The COVID-19 pandemic appears to be easing in most nations in Europe, thanks to the effectiveness of methods to control transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This offers a good opportunity, then, to take a look back at what worked -- and what didn't -- during the desperate days in the spring, when the pandemic appeared to be out of control.
At a recent session at the virtual ECR 2020, radiologists from Spain, Italy, and the U.K. -- some of the hardest-hit countries -- described the creative measures they took to provide the best possible patient care while also protecting physicians and staff from infection.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a valuable tool to assist radiologists in detecting signs of COVID-19 on medical images. But what's the best way to find out about the galaxy of AI algorithms that are available? A group from the Netherlands offers a potential solution.
And AI figured prominently in a session at ECR 2020 that touched on the future of CT lung screening. U.K. researchers discussed what they would wish for in the perfect computer-aided detection algorithm for CT lung screening, while Dutch researchers who headed up the landmark NELSON CT lung cancer screening trial discussed the next step in their research -- finding the optimal screening interval.
Dealing with interval breast cancers was another important presentation topic at ECR 2020, while researchers from Spain, Germany, and Italy discussed the manifestations of COVID-19 outside the lungs in their online talk.
Meanwhile, German researchers nabbed a major award at the online sessions of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) meeting, which wrapped up last week. And on a more somber note, the global molecular imaging community is mourning the death of Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, PhD, of Stanford University in the U.S. He died of cancer on 18 July at the age of 57.
