Dear Women's Imaging Insider,
A major overhaul of the international classification system for cervical cancer staging took place in 2018, and these changes are now having an important clinical impact.
A group from the Imperial College Healthcare National Health Service (NHS) Trust in London has taken a detailed look at the new system, and the researchers won a prestigious cum laude award at RSNA 2019 in Chicago for their work. Don't miss our news report.
In addition, researchers from the University of Düsseldorf in Germany unveiled a pair of PET/MRI studies at RSNA 2019.
In the first presentation, the hybrid modality outperformed whole-body MRI and ultrasound for the accurate staging of breast cancer, but it fell short against invasive sentinel lymph node biopsy. Imaging still fails to reliably differentiate the N-positive and N-negative breast cancers, compared with the gold standard of sentinel lymph node biopsy, the authors concluded.
In a second study, the main aim was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of whole-body MRI compared with whole-body FDG-PET/MRI for the initial tumor, node, and metastases (TNM) staging for newly diagnosed, histologically proven breast cancer patients. PET/MRI proved superior to MRI alone.
Clinical implementation of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has been less rapid in Europe than in North America, so for the latest perspective on DBT, it makes sense to take note of the experiences of a top U.S. facility. Researchers from the New York University School of Medicine have provided a succinct roundup of where we stand with DBT. They discussed the pros and cons and looked at where the technology is heading.
Breast cancer screening is a fascinating area for artificial intelligence (AI) applications due to the high volumes related to breast screening, so a dedicated session at RSNA 2019 was bound to generate great attention. We interviewed some of the main protagonists and asked for their views on AI in screening, and Dr. László Tabár also expressed an opinion too.
This letter features only a few of the news reports posted over the past month or so in the Women's Imaging Community. Please scroll through the full list of our coverage below.
