The pluck of an Italian 3D mammography engineer who works for GE in France has caught the eye of a Forbes.com contributing writer in the U.K. who describes his journalism niche as covering “amazing tech and the people inventing it.”

Flying in the face of a January study in Science suggesting that two-thirds of cancers result from random cell mutations, a new study in Nature points to behavioral factors as the culprit in nine of every 10.

That old saying "jack of all trades, master of none" can be applied to medical imaging. Even the bright minds that make up the radiology workforce need focused training and years of specific experience in order to understand all the intricacies of the profession, and there's one area in particular where specialized expertise is particularly valuable: mammography.

When preparing comparison studies, reporting “no change”—not “no interval change,” not “stable,” not some other variation on the theme—is the best, clearest and most consistent way for radiologists to communicate an absence of change to referring physicians and, increasingly, patients.

Architectural distortion, the non-mass but potentially ominous clinical feature observed in many breast imaging procedures, is less likely to signal malignancy when it’s detected on screening mammography rather than diagnostic mammography or when it does not correlate with a subsequent targeted ultrasound exam.

Screening mammography of women in their 40s based solely on risk as flagged by extremely dense breasts, very strong family history or both would lead to much higher mortality on the heels of more than 75 percent fewer screen-detected cancers in this group.

CMS has finalized its proposal of last September not to pay for PET scans using the sodium-fluoride radiopharmaceutical NaF-18, which the agency says still lacks evidence backing it as “reasonable and necessary” in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer that has metastasized to the bones. 

Roseland Community Hospital, based in Chicago, Ill., has successfully deployed the eRAD cloud-based PACS, with Integrated Speech Recognition, as part of its commitment to using the most advanced imaging technology available.