Moving to bring 3D assets in-house, Toshiba Medical Systems has inked an agreement to purchase Barco's Advanced Visualization Imaging System (AVIS) division, which develops the company's Voxar software.

A new power combo consisting of adenosine stress and dual-energy CT (DECT) is delivering diagnostic accuracy equivalent to stress/rest cardiac MRI and nuclear perfusion (SPECT) for detecting perfusion defects, according to research presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in New Orleans.

Small, portable ultrasound units can play a valuable role in improving access to imaging technology in developing nations, according to research published in the December issue of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov 21 - Breast cancer patients with brain metastases benefit from treatment with intravenous chemotherapy in combination with radiotherapy, according to a report in the November 1 issue of Cancer.

Virtual colonoscopy may have been dealt a setback this week after members of a U.S. government panel expressed doubts about the technology. Panel members charged with recommending whether VC should receive Medicare reimbursement said there was incomplete evidence of VC's cost-effectiveness and overall benefit as a screening tool for colorectal cancer.

California researchers warn that future decreases in reimbursement for dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) could lead to an increase in hip fractures among senior citizens. The researchers analyzed nontraumatic hip fractures among patients 50 years and older and correlated the data with screening programs, treatment efforts, and Medicare reimbursement.

A rural California hospital is being sued by parents of a child who underwent a CT exam during an emergency department visit for a neck injury. The parents allege that their 23-month-old boy received radiation burns and has permanent chromosomal damage due to excessive radiation exposure from the CT scan, which took over an hour to perform.

Emergency department (ED) radiologists are crediting speech recognition technology with a dramatic reduction in report turnaround times at a level I trauma center. Final reports for "routine" procedures are being generated in an hour or less, compared to 3.6 days before implementation of a multiphase process improvement project.

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), an imaging technology developed by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, is proving highly accurate in detecting liver fibrosis and may help eliminate the need for liver biopsies.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov 19 - Women with a significant family history of breast cancer but without BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations have approximately a fourfold increased risk of developing the disease, study findings suggest.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health), Nov. 19 - Calf circumference shows an inverse association with carotid plaques, according to French researchers who report the findings of the "Three-City Study" in the November issue of Stroke.