Edward Steiner, MD on his decision to balance WellSpan Health’s scanner investments with AI advancements.

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WellSpan Health’s AI Implementation

We’re excited to share the latest Imaging Wire Show, featuring Aidoc’s Elad Walach and WellSpan Health’s Edward Steiner, MD.

We explore WellSpan’s path towards AI adoption, WellSpan and Aidoc’s evolving partnership, why some in radiology are slow to adopt AI, and how they can successfully bring AI into their practices. This is a must-watch episode whether you’re an AI insider or still figuring out your AI plan, so check it out.

Molecular Imaging

BAMF & United Imaging’s Precision Medicine Milestone

BAMF Health took a big step in its precision medicine strategy, installing United Imaging’s uEXPLORER total-body PET/CT scanner as it prepares to open its theranostics treatment center. 

Founded in 2018, BAMF Health (Bold Advanced Medical Future) has applied a unique approach to developing advanced treatments, combining the world’s “most advanced” radiopharmacy, its proprietary AI platform, and top molecular imaging technology to deliver hyper-personalized and targeted treatments.

Installing United Imaging’s uEXPLORER total-body PET/CT scanner represents a key final addition to BAMF Health’s precision medicine stack, and makes it the first institution in the US using total-body PET for theranostics. More importantly, the uEXPLORER will allow BAMF Health to deliver more effective and efficient theranostics treatments by:

• Imaging patients’ entire bodies in a single scan (vs. “eyes to thighs”)
• Detecting and targeting signs of cancer smaller than two millimeters (vs. 1 cm)
• Scanning patients in just one minute (vs. up to 1hr)
• Reducing radiation dosage by up to 40x

BAMF Health’s launch might also represent an early theranostics paradigm shift, highlighting the potential role of private clinics (vs. academic/large institutions) and total-body PET/CT systems (vs. “whole”) with the advanced therapy.

BAMF Health will begin treating patients for prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumors at its Michigan-based clinic this summer, but plans to deliver a wide range of personalized treatments that extend well beyond cancer in the future (e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cardiac diseases, endometriosis, chronic pain) and treat patients from around the country.

The Takeaway

Although BAMF Health still has a lot to prove, its upcoming clinical launch might be a key milestone in the evolution of theranostics and molecular imaging.

Made in Texas. Built for the Modern World.

See how United Imaging’s fresh approach, vertically integrated structure, and unique “all-in” strategy is raising the bar in medical imaging.

The Case for Enterprise Cloud

Is your organization ready to move enterprise imaging to the cloud? Check out this Change Healthcare and ACHE webinar detailing cloud-native imaging’s benefits, best practices, and ROI.

The Wire

• GE Invests in Pulsenmore: GE Healthcare will invest up to $50M in home maternity ultrasound startup Pulsenmore, bringing GE into the fast-growing home care segment and helping Pulsenmore expand globally. GE Healthcare will support Pulsenmore as it brings its maternity ultrasound system into the U.S. and Europe, while the companies will collaborate on future home ultrasound products (perhaps beyond maternity & fertility). Although Pulsenmore has already achieved solid early adoption in Israel and other vendors have been advancing their tele-ultrasound products/strategies, GE’s investment gives the home ultrasound segment a new level of credibility and influence.

• Thyroid Ultrasound Risk AI: Stanford researchers developed a deep learning risk-stratification system that classified thyroid nodules in ultrasound cine images more accurately than other DL models and TI-RADS assessments. When applied to 192 nodules (17 malignant, 177 patients), the DL system achieved a higher AUC than a pair of DL models and radiologists’ original TI-RADS assessments (0.88 vs. 0.72 & 0.78 & 0.80). The DL system would have downgraded 94 TI-RADS recommendations (92 benign nodules, 2 malignant), improving the original TI-RADS assessments’ specificity (79.4% vs. 26.9%) without significantly impacting sensitivity (71% vs. 82%).

• CT-FFR’s Pre-TAVR Impact: A new JACC study added more evidence for using CT-FFR before TAVR procedures, showing that it’s more accurate than CCTA and could reduce unnecessary invasive coronary angiographies (ICA). Analysis of 76 patients with significant coronary stenosis (≥1) who underwent pre-TAVR CCTA exams showed that CT-FFR outperformed CCTA for sensitivity (84.6% vs. 76.9%), specificity (88.3% vs. 64.5%), and diagnostic accuracy (87.6% vs. 66.9%). These results suggest that a CT-FFR–guided approach could avoid ICA in 57.1% of patients, versus 43.6% with CCTA. 

• Therapixel’s Series B: French mammography AI startup Therapixel completed a €15M Series B round that it will use to support the commercial deployment of its MammoScreen reading solutions in the United States. Although not yet a household name in the US, Therapixel has maintained solid momentum since its €5M Series A in 2019, gaining FDA clearance for its 2D and 3D solutions, establishing an initial client base, and adding to its research evidence.

• PI-RR Performance: A new Radiology Journal study supports the Prostate Imaging for Recurrence Reporting (PI-RR) assessment method’s value for evaluating prostate cancer recurrence. Using mpMRI exams from 100 men (48 after radiation therapy, 52 after radical prostatectomy) and a ≥3 PI-RR cutoff score, four readers detected biochemical prostate cancer recurrence with 0.77 to 0.92 AUCs within the radiation therapy group and between 0.80 and 0.88 AUCs within the radical prostatectomy group. The radiologists achieved an 0.87 intraclass correlation coefficient across both groups, suggesting that PI-RR allows good-to-excellent reliability.

• Silent Atherosclerosis Evidence: The main results of the Miami Heart Study are officially published, confirming that many asymptomatic people have coronary plaque and stenosis that is detectable with low-dose coronary CT angiography. The researchers performed CCTAs on 2,359 asymptomatic individuals (53yr avg. age), finding that 49% had coronary plaque, 6% had at least moderate stenosis (≥50%), and 7% had plaques with at least one high-risk feature. CCTA also detected non-calcified plaque in 16% of patients with zero CAC scores (2.3% w/ high-risk plaques), demonstrating CCTA’s added value for risk stratification.

• The Fallacy of Zero CAC: In similar news, a new JACC editorial highlighted the “false sense of cardiac health” created by zero calcium scores. The author cited a growing field of research showing that many patients with zero CAC scores have detectable plaque on CCTA, and that follow-up CCTAs commonly show non-calcified plaque progression. Given the new solutions supporting automated coronary plaque quantification and the growing evidence of what CAC scanning misses, the author urged adopting CCTA-based approaches for symptomatic patients.

• Imaging’s Downward Q1: After more than a year of widespread growth, industry headwinds caused a number of the major OEMs’ healthcare/imaging division revenues to decline during the January to March quarter. Fujifilm’s healthcare division once again posted the greatest growth (+17% to $1.76B), followed by Hologic’s breast imaging division (+9.2% to $269.9M), Siemens Healthineers’ imaging business (+6.5% to $2.72B), and GE Healthcare (+2% to $4.4B). Meanwhile, the quarter brought revenue declines within Konica Minolta’s healthcare division (-28% to $199M), Canon Medical Systems (-5% to $919M), and Philips’ Diagnosis & Treatment division (-2% to $1.98B). For context, only two quarterly declines occurred in the previous two quarters combined.

• Patients’ AI Perspectives: A new JAMA study suggests that most patients (n = 926 in 2019) are optimistic about the impact of healthcare AI, although a lot of that depends on how AI is used. The majority of respondents believed that AI would make health care either “much” or “somewhat” better (10.9% & 44.5%), while 19% “did not know” how AI would impact care, and just 4.3% believed AI would make health care “somewhat” worse. Perhaps more notable, most patients were “very” or “somewhat” comfortable with AI reading a CXR (12.3% & 42.7%), but far fewer felt that way about AI making cancer diagnoses (6% & 25.2%).

• Densitas & Blackford Expand: Densitas and Blackford Analysis expanded their partnership, adding Densitas’ breast cancer risk assessment and image quality solutions to the Blackford Platform. Densitas’ riskAI and qualityAI solutions join its flagship densityAI density analysis solution on the Blackford Platform, giving Blackford clients access to much of its portfolio.

Automating Echo AI

Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Us2.ai’s co-founders, James Hare and Carolyn Lam MBBS, PhD, detailing Us2.ai’s unique origins, impressive capabilities, and big goals to automate echocardiography reporting across the world.

The Premier Imaging Informatics Meeting is Back In-Person!

Join imaging informaticists from around the globe at SIIM22 and: 

– Discover Dynamic Learning, Emerging Technologies, and Networking
– Experience SIIM’s Unique Culture of Vendors + Users Innovating Together
– Education Tailored to Your Role in the Imaging Informatics Innovation Pathway

The Resource Wire

• Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Arterys’ Director of Product Management, Maya Khalifé, PhD, discussing how to deliver clinical value with AI, Arterys’ platform approach to neuro AI, and how AI can serve radiologists today and into the future.

• See how Chicago’s Loyola University Health System overcame legacy PACS and workflow constraints by adopting Intelerad’s InteleOne XE enterprise workflow solution.

• Learn how Salem Regional Medical Center improved its radiology workflows and cut service and syringe expenses after adopting Bayer’s MEDRAD Stellant FLEX system.

• Trying to figure out how your IT resources can handle increased AI adoption? This Blackford paper details how the cloud is helping radiology organizations scale their computing resources to support multiple AI applications or algorithms.

• This Riverain Technologies case study details how the University of Colorado Hospital enhanced its chest X-ray workflow with ClearRead Bone Suppress.

• See how Canon Medical’s AiCE image reconstruction solution allows Cartesion Prime digital PET/CT users to further improve image quality and reduce scan times.

• MR might be known for soft tissue imaging, but GE Healthcare’s oZTEo application is making one-stop soft tissue and bone imaging a reality. See how oZTEo works and how it might impact practices and patient care here. 

• Pediatric patients can’t always accurately describe their orthopedic-related pain. Read how Lorenzo Biassnoi, MD, describes how SPECT/CT can help in this SPECT/CT and pediatric orthopedic surgery story.

• See how Thomas Jefferson University relied on CARPL.ai to accelerate its AI validation and clinical adoption in this presentation by informatics and AI leader, Dr. Paras Lakhani.

• Think your imaging center patients and staff might be open to a better check-in process? See how Radiology Associates of Daytona (RA) streamlined patient check-ins with Fujifilm’s Synapse RIS-integrated Royal Kiosks. 

• Do your radiologists want faster and less manual access to imaging studies? See how the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), the largest inter-organizational clinical data repository in the US, cut its imaging study retrieval time by 94% when it adopted Nuance PowerShare.

• This Novarad blog outlines the product, vendor, future-proofing, and support considerations to help make sure you select the right system.