Philips Healthcare's Brilliance iCT 256-slice CT scanner has been on the market since 2008, and the latest evolution of the Brilliance family--the iCT SP--was featured at the recent 2009 conference of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) in Orlando, Fla.

TeraRecon, a developer of advanced image processing and 3D visualization techniques, showcased its latest iteration of Aquarius iNtuition (4.4) software, with a special emphasis on low-dose scanning strategies, at the annual meeting of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) held last week in Orlando, Fla.

Epix Pharmaceuticals reported Monday that it has decided to shut down due to a lack of capital and its inability to obtain additional financing or consummate a strategic transaction.

Harvard researchers used CT angiography (CTA) to determine that certain left ventricular (LV) metrics correlate with the degree of coronary plaque burden in patients without LV hypertrophy. The findings could provide an indication to intensify medical therapy in patients with subclinical coronary artery disease and hypertension, according to a study presented at last week's Society of Cardiovascular CT (SCCT) meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Prospective ECG-triggering CT allows an accurate detection of coronary stenosis with a low radiation dose, despite a slight reduction of diagnostic performance, according to a single-center study in the July 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The use of cardiac CT for low-risk chest pain patients in the emergency department--instead of the traditional standard-of-care workup--may reduce a patient's length of stay and hospital charges, according to a single-center study in the July issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

Computer-aided detection (CAD) systems have proved their reliability in terms of sensitivity and specificity as a second reader for chest imaging, mammography and breast MRI in standalone studies assessing performance for a selected group. But before you can ask how CAD is impacting diagnosis and proving its value in everyday clinical practice, the interaction (or learning curve) between radiologist and the technology and the balancing act between sensitivity and specificity must be considered.

Clinicians neglect to note a substantial proportion of new aortic dilations in their EMR systems, according to a respective cohort study in the July 7 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.