Dear AuntMinnieEurope Member,
It won't be a surprise if senior officials from the European Society of Cardiology feel a little uncomfortable at next month's ECR 2014. Few of them will be familiar with either the idiosyncrasies of the Austria Center Vienna or the format and atmosphere of Europe's leading radiology congress.
It's really encouraging, however, that they'll be in Vienna, having accepted the European Society of Radiology's bold invitation to organize a special session about cardiac imaging. ECR 2014 President Dr. Valentin Sinitsyn wants to encourage teamwork between radiologists and cardiologists and avoid turf battles. Find out more in our Cardiac Imaging Digital Community, or click here.
There's huge pressure now on imaging departments to improve the turnaround times of reports, but Swiss radiologists believe they have found a solution. Get the story here.
Fresh data from a controversial Canadian study published this week in BMJ has cast doubt on mammography's effectiveness in women under 60, but some observers think there are flaws in the research. Visit our Women's Imaging Digital Community, or click here.
Also be sure to check out a Second Opinion article contributed by Dr. László Tabár of the University of Uppsala. Dr. Tabár shares his concerns about the quality of the mammography performed in the Canadian study. Read more by clicking here.
The Winter Olympics are underway in Sochi, Russia, and we've interviewed a radiographer and a sports medicine specialist about imaging's role at the games. To read more, click here.
PET/MRI continues to attract attention. The simultaneous technique combines the sensitive molecular imaging of PET with soft-tissue contrast and functional information from MRI. A promising application for PET/MRI is quantitative brain imaging, which demands high performance and stability from both modalities, according to German researchers. Go to our Molecular Imaging Digital Community, or click here.
Research published in the European Journal of Radiology has also caught our eye. Actual patient radiation dose data extracted from RIS/PACS databases are far more reliable than commonly used self-reported patient dose surveys that are based on average-sized patients and typical scanner parameters, authors have found. Click here for the details.
