Dear CT Insider,
After a slow start, breast CT is making rapid progress -- thanks in large part to the influential German medical physicist Willi Kalender, PhD. He has developed a new scanner that he hopes will eventually revolutionize breast imaging. Clinical testing is due to start in mid-2013, and the plan is to have 10 worldwide installations by 2014.
At last week's RSNA congress, Kalender promoted his system and gave a refresher course about breast CT. We interviewed him about his new project and his unlikely collaboration with Dr. Christiane Kuhl of Aachen. To read more, go to our CT Digital Community, or click here.
Norwegian researchers also made the headlines at RSNA 2012. A team from Oslo presented a study that compared conventional chest radiography to 320-detector-row CT using advanced iterative reconstruction. They found no advantages to chest radiography outside the realm of cost, and noted that the switch to CT would have happened long ago were it not for radiography's far lower dose profile. Get the story here.
Meanwhile, Belgian radiologists attending the Chicago meeting showed that ultralow-dose CT can be performed in pediatric cystic fibrosis patients at a radiation dose that approaches that of a frontal chest radiograph. They think ultralow-dose CT may replace chest x-ray in these patients for a more accurate assessment of bronchiectasis, although they stress that more studies are necessary in larger patient groups. To learn more, click here.
The jury is still out on the cost-effectiveness of CT as a tool for colorectal cancer screening, but the release of comprehensive data from the Dutch population-based screening trial involving 1,100 patients should provide much needed clarification. Click here to read more.
To read other articles, please go to our CT Digital Community and scroll down the list of stories.
