A high percentage of CT and MRI examinations are not meeting appropriateness criteria and subsequently yielding negative results, which suggests a need for tools to help primary care physicians hone their imaging decision requests, according to a recent article in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

A high percentage of MRI and CT examinations are not meeting appropriateness criteria and those that don't typically yield negative results, suggesting a need for tools to help primary care physicians improve the quality of their imaging referral decisions, according to a study published online today in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).

The use of advanced imaging modalities such as MRI, CT and PET have increased dramatically in physician offices and hospital emergency and outpatient departments over the last decade, according to an annual report on U.S. health issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Agfa HealthCare (Booth #1633) will offer the healthcare community systems for clinical consolidation, results distribution and improved communication between care providers at the HIMSS10 conference in Atlanta in early March.

Siemens Healthcare will supply diagnostics imaging equipment to all Ministry of Health hospitals (approximately 100) across Iraq.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently approved three organizations as designated accrediting bodies for non-hospital providers of advanced medical imaging. Stephen Green, MD, chief of cardiology at North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, N.Y., said that such accreditation standardization makes sense.

Eastern Diagnostic Imaging and InfiMed have developed an original equipment manufacturer distribution partnership for the wireless technology in the portable x-ray environment, the i5 Mobile DR upgrade for GE Healthcare's AMX-4 and AMX-4+ portables.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center are incorporating radiation dose exposure reports into the EMR, an effort that they hope will lead to an accurate assessment of whether any cancer risk is associated with low-dose radiation exposure from medical imaging tests, based on an article in Februarys Journal of the American College of Radiology.