Cloud computing in medical imaging.

Over the past century technology has played a decisive role in defining, driving, and reinventing procedures, devices, and pharmaceuticals in healthcare. Cloud computing has been introduced only recently but is already one of the major topics of discussion in research and clinical settings. The provision of extensive, easily accessible, and reconfigurable resources such as virtual systems, platforms, and applications with low service cost has caught the attention of many researchers and clinicians. Healthcare researchers are moving their efforts to the cloud, because they need adequate resources to process, store, exchange, and use large quantities of medical data. This Vision 20/20 paper addresses major questions related to the applicability of advanced cloud computing in medical imaging. The paper also considers security and ethical issues that accompany cloud computing.

Radiation exposure from CT scans: how to close our knowledge gaps, monitor and safeguard exposure--proceedings and recommendations of the Radiation Dose Summit, sponsored by NIBIB, February 24-25, 2011.

This article summarizes the proceedings of a portion of the Radiation Dose Summit, which was organized by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and held in Bethesda, Maryland, in February 2011. The current understandings of ways to optimize the benefit-risk ratio of computed tomography (CT) examinations are summarized and recommendations are made for priority areas of research to close existing gaps in our knowledge. The prospects of achieving a submillisievert effective dose CT examination routinely are assessed.

Emerging technologies for image guidance and device navigation in interventional radiology.

Recent developments in image-guidance and device navigation, along with emerging robotic technologies, are rapidly transforming the landscape of interventional radiology (IR). Future state-of-the-art IR procedures may include real-time three-dimensional imaging that is capable of visualizing the target organ, interventional tools, and surrounding anatomy with high spatial and temporal resolution. Remote device actuation is becoming a reality with the introduction of novel magnetic-field enabled instruments and remote robotic steering systems. Robots offer several degrees of freedom and unprecedented accuracy, stability, and dexterity during device navigation, propulsion, and actuation. Optimization of tracking and navigation of interventional tools inside the human body will be critical in converting IR suites into the minimally invasive operating theaters of the future with increased safety and unsurpassed therapeutic efficacy. In the not too distant future, individual image guidance modalities and device tracking methods could merge into autonomous, multimodality, multiparametric platforms that offer real-time data of anatomy, morphology, function, and metabolism along with on-the-fly computational modeling and remote robotic actuation. The authors provide a concise overview of the latest developments in image guidance and device navigation, while critically envisioning what the future might hold for 2020 IR procedures.

Radiation risks of medical imaging: separating fact from fantasy.

During the past few years, several articles have appeared in the scientific literature that predict thousands of cancers and cancer deaths per year in the U.S. population caused by medical imaging procedures that use ionizing radiation. These predictions are computed by multiplying small and highly speculative risk factors by large populations of patients to yield impressive numbers of "cancer victims." The risk factors are acquired from the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) VII report without attention to the caveats about their use presented in the BEIR VII report. The principal data source for the risk factors is the ongoing study of survivors of the Japanese atomic explosions, a population of individuals that is greatly different from patients undergoing imaging procedures. For the purpose of risk estimation, doses to patients are converted to effective doses, even though the International Commission on Radiological Protection warns against the use of effective dose for epidemiologic studies or for estimation of individual risks. To extrapolate cancer incidence to doses of a few millisieverts from data greater than 100 mSv, a linear no-threshold model is used, even though substantial radiobiological and human exposure data imply that it is not an appropriate model. The predictions of cancers and cancer deaths are sensationalized in electronic and print public media, resulting in anxiety and fear about medical imaging among patients and parents. Not infrequently, patients are anxious about a scheduled imaging procedure because of articles they have read in the public media. In some cases, medical imaging examinations may be delayed or deferred as a consequence, resulting in a much greater risk to patients than that associated with imaging examinations. © RSNA, 2012.

An approach to assessing stochastic radiogenic risk in medical imaging.

PURPOSE: This letter suggests a formalism, the medical effective dose (MED), that is suitable for assessing stochastic radiogenic risks in diagnostic medical procedures. METHODS: The MED is derived from radiobiological and probabilistic first principals, including: (1) The independence of radiation-induced biological effects in neighboring voxels at low doses; (2) the linear no-threshold assumption for stochastic radiation injury (although other dose-response relationships could be incorporated, instead); (3) the best human radiation dose-response data currently available; and (4) the built-in possibility that the carcinogenic risk to an irradiated organ may depend on its volume. The MED involves a dose-risk summation over irradiated voxels at high spatial resolution; it reduces to the traditional effective dose when every organ is irradiated uniformly and when the dependence of risk on organ volumes is ignored. Standard relative-risk tissue weighting factors can be used with the MED approach until more refined data become available. RESULTS: The MED is intended for clinical and phantom dosimetry, and it provides an estimate of overall relative radiogenic stochastic risk for any given dose distribution. A result of the MED derivation is that the stochastic risk may increase with the volume of tissue (i.e., the number of cells) irradiated, a feature that can be activated when forthcoming radiobiological research warrants it. In this regard, the MED resembles neither the standard effective dose (E) nor the CT dose index (CTDI), but it is somewhat like the CT dose-length product (DLP). CONCLUSIONS: The MED is a novel, probabilistically and biologically based means of estimating stochastic-risk-weighted doses associated with medical imaging. Built in, ab initio, is the ability to link radiogenic risk to organ volume and other clinical factors. It is straightforward to implement when medical dose distributions are available, provided that one is content, for the time being, to accept the relative tissue weighting factors published by the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP). It requires no new radiobiological data and avoids major problems encountered by the E, CTDI, and CT-E formalisms. It makes possible relative inter-patient dosimetry, and also realistic intercomparisons of stochastic risks from different protocols that yield images of comparable quality.

Improving patient safety in radiation oncology.

Beginning in the 1990s, and emphasized in 2000 with the release of an Institute of Medicine report, healthcare providers and institutions have dedicated time and resources to reducing errors that impact the safety and well-being of patients. But in January 2010 the first of a series of articles appeared in the New York Times that described errors in radiation oncology that grievously impacted patients. In response, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the American Society of Radiation Oncology sponsored a working meeting entitled "Safety in Radiation Therapy: A Call to Action." The meeting attracted 400 attendees, including medical physicists, radiation oncologists, medical dosimetrists, radiation therapists, hospital administrators, regulators, and representatives of equipment manufacturers. The meeting was cohosted by 14 organizations in the United States and Canada. The meeting yielded 20 recommendations that provide a pathway to reducing errors and improving patient safety in radiation therapy facilities everywhere.

Improving patient safety in radiation oncology.

Beginning in the 1990s, and emphasized in 2000 with the release of an Institute of Medicine report, health care providers and institutions have dedicated time and resources to reducing errors that impact the safety and well-being of patients. However, in January 2010, the first of a series of articles appeared in The New York Times that described errors in radiation oncology that grievously impacted patients. In response, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the American Society for Radiation Oncology sponsored a working meeting entitled "Safety in Radiation Therapy: A Call to Action." The meeting attracted 400 attendees, including medical physicists, radiation oncologists, medical dosimetrists, radiation therapists, hospital administrators, regulators, and representatives of equipment manufacturers. The meeting was co-hosted by 14 organizations in the United States and Canada. The meeting yielded 20 recommendations that provided a pathway to reducing errors and improving patient safety in radiation therapy facilities everywhere.

Recommended ethics curriculum for medical physics graduate and residency programs: report of Task Group 159.

The AAPM Professional Council approved the formation of a task group in 2007, whose purpose is to develop recommendations for an ethics curriculum for medical physics graduate and residency programs. Existing program's ethics curricula range in scope and content considerably. It is desirable to have a more uniform baseline curriculum for all programs. Recommended subjects areas, suggested ethics references, and a sample curriculum are included. This report recommends a reasonable ethics course time to be 15-30 h while allowing each program the flexibility to design their course.

Addressing overutilization in medical imaging.

The growth in medical imaging over the past 2 decades has yielded unarguable benefits to patients in terms of longer lives of higher quality. This growth reflects new technologies and applications, including high-tech services such as multisection computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, and positron emission tomography (PET). Some part of the growth, however, can be attributed to the overutilization of imaging services. This report examines the causes of the overutilization of imaging and identifies ways of addressing the causes so that overutilization can be reduced. In August 2009, the American Board of Radiology Foundation hosted a 2-day summit to discuss the causes and effects of the overutilization of imaging. More than 60 organizations were represented at the meeting, including health care accreditation and certification entities, foundations, government agencies, hospital and health systems, insurers, medical societies, health care quality consortia, and standards and regulatory agencies. Key forces influencing overutilization were identified. These include the payment mechanisms and financial incentives in the U.S. health care system; the practice behavior of referring physicians; self-referral, including referral for additional radiologic examinations; defensive medicine; missed educational opportunities when inappropriate procedures are requested; patient expectations; and duplicate imaging studies. Summit participants suggested several areas for improvement to reduce overutilization, including a national collaborative effort to develop evidence-based appropriateness criteria for imaging; greater use of practice guidelines in requesting and conducting imaging studies; decision support at point of care; education of referring physicians, patients, and the public; accreditation of imaging facilities; management of self-referral and defensive medicine; and payment reform.

Medical response to a major radiologic emergency: a primer for medical and public health practitioners.

UNLABELLED: There are several types of serious nuclear or radiologic emergencies that would require a specialized medical response. Four scenarios of great public health, economic, and psychologic impact are the detonation of a nuclear weapon, the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, the explosion of a large radiologic dispersal device ("dirty bomb"), or the surreptitious placement of a radiation exposure device in a public area of high population density. With any of these, medical facilities that remain functional may have to deal with large numbers of ill, wounded, and probably contaminated people. Special care and/or handling will be needed for those with trauma, blast injuries, or thermal burns as well as significant radiation exposures or contamination. In addition, radiologists, nuclear medicine specialists, and radiation oncologists will be called on to perform a number of diverse and critically important tasks, including advising political and public health leaders, interfacing with the media, managing essential resources, and, of course, providing medical care. This article describes the medical responses needed following a radiologic or nuclear incident, including the symptoms of and specific treatments for acute radiation syndrome and other early health effects. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: http://radiology.rsna.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1148/radiol.09090330/-/DC1.

Teaching physics to radiology residents.

OBJECTIVE: The complexity of diagnostic imaging has expanded dramatically over the past two decades. Over the same period, the time and effort devoted to teaching physics (the science and technology of the discipline) have diminished. This paradox compromises the ability of future radiologists to master imaging technologies so that they are used in an efficient, safe, and cost-effective manner. This article addresses these issues. CONCLUSION: Efforts involving many professional organizations are under way to resolve the paradox of the expanding complexity of medical imaging contrasted with the declining emphasis on physics in radiology residency programs. These efforts should help to reestablish physics education as a core value in radiology residency programs.

Code of Ethics for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine: report of Task Group 109.

A comprehensive Code of Ethics for the members of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) is presented as the report of Task Group 109 which consolidates previous AAPM ethics policies into a unified document. The membership of the AAPM is increasingly diverse. Prior existing AAPM ethics polices were applicable specifically to medical physicists, and did not encompass other types of members such as health physicists, regulators, corporate affiliates, physicians, scientists, engineers, those in training, or other health care professionals. Prior AAPM ethics policies did not specifically address research, education, or business ethics. The Ethics Guidelines of this new Code of Ethics have four major sections: professional conduct, research ethics, education ethics, and business ethics. Some elements of each major section may be duplicated in other sections, so that readers interested in a particular aspect of the code do not need to read the entire document for all relevant information. The prior Complaint Procedure has also been incorporated into this Code of Ethics. This Code of Ethics (PP 24-A) replaces the following AAPM policies: Ethical Guidelines for Vacating a Position (PP 4-B); Ethical Guidelines for Reviewing the Work of Another Physicist (PP 5-C); Guidelines for Ethical Practice for Medical Physicists (PP 8-D); and Ethics Complaint Procedure (PP 21-A). The AAPM Board of Directors approved this Code or Ethics on July 31, 2008.

Methods and resources for physics education in radiology residency programs: survey results.

Over the past 2 years, ongoing efforts have been made to reevaluate and restructure the way physics education is provided to radiology residents. Program directors and faculty from North American radiology residency programs were surveyed about how physics is being taught and what resources are currently being used for their residents. Substantial needs were identified for additional educational resources in physics, better integration of physics into clinical training, and a standardized physics curriculum closely linked to the initial certification examination of the American Board of Radiology.

Bioengineering and Imaging Research Opportunities Workshop V: a summary on Imaging and Characterizing Structure and Function in Native and Engineered Tissues.

The Fifth Bioengineering and Imaging Research Opportunities Workshop (BIROW V) was held on January 18-19, 2008. As with previous BIROW meetings, the purpose of BIROW V was to identify and characterize research and engineering opportunities in biomedical engineering and imaging. The topic of this BIROW meeting was Imaging and Characterizing Structure and Function in Native and Engineered Tissues. Under this topic, four areas were explored in depth:1) Heterogeneous single-cell measurements and their integration into tissue and organism models;2) Functional, molecular, and structural imaging of engineered tissue in vitro and in vivo;3) New technologies for characterizing cells and tissues in situ;4) Imaging for targeted cell, gene, and drug delivery.