Just under 450 new therapies are in the works for a wide range of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s  and Parkinson’s disease, brain cancer, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and many others, according to a 2013 report released Wednesday by PhRMA, a biopharmaceutical industry trade group.

Following two conferences held by the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA) and a variety of stakeholders, a new focus on diagnostic PET tracers’ effect on patient management rather than direct health benefits is being presented for potential clinical trials, according to a review published August 1 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

The American Association of Clinical Urologists (AACU), the American Urological Association (AUA) and the Large Urology Group Practice Association (LUGPA), today jointly refuted the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) flawed and misleading study on the use of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for the treatment of prostate cancer.

The gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (BB2r) has become a popular target in prostate cancer imaging, but low local retention of tracers at the tumor site impedes imaging. Hypoxia-enhanced targeting of these receptors may be just what the doctor ordered for better tumor-tracer retention, according to a study published July 29th in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Novel molecular imaging detection of atherosclerosis is increasingly being presented to head off arterial damage and risk of cardiac events before they are found by more conventional methods, but FDGPET may not be the ideal solution, according to a study published July 25th in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

MINNEAPOLIS—While it may seem that many of the categories in the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey don’t apply to radiology, digital radiography (DR) actually lends itself quite well to the HCAHPS measures, according to a presentation at the annual meeting of AHRA.

CT and MRI scans of the spine for back pain are the poster children for overused and likely inappropriate imaging. Throughout the 2000s the use of advanced imaging in this area increased significantly and presumably drove up downstream costs for back pain management, according to a study published online July 29 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Concordance between radiologic and pathologic findings may allow some women diagnosed with atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH) or lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) to be followed up via observation rather than biopsy, according to results of a study published online July 30 in Radiology.