A LinkedIn comment from Texas Health Resources PACS admin, Paul Fontenot, CIIP.

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MR Scanners

MRI Accessibility Advantage

Memorial MRI and Diagnostic’s COO Todd Greene starred in a recent Aunt Minnie webinar, detailing the role MRI accessibility plays in the Texas imaging group’s strategy, and sharing some very relevant takeaways for imaging providers and vendors.

Founded in 2001, Memorial MRI and Diagnostic (MMD) operates 16 imaging centers across Texas, including eight in greater Houston and eight Dallas-area locations added through its 2021 acquisition of Prime Diagnostic Imaging. 

• MMD’s strategy focuses on integrating its imaging centers within their local communities, making patient access and referring physician relationships particularly important.

In addition to proximity to patients, MMD’s MRI accessibility strategy historically focused on maintaining a fleet of open bore 1.5T MRI scanners to accommodate larger and claustrophobic patients. 

• This is especially important given that many of MMD’s patients are “Texas sized” or don’t realize they’re claustrophobic until the scan begins. 

That strategy started to change when MMD installed United Imaging’s 3T uMR OMEGA ultra-wide-bore (75 cm), allowing it to scan larger and claustrophobia-prone patients (plus all other patients) without open MRIs’ scan speed and image quality tradeoffs. 

• The uMR OMEGA was MMD’s first 3T MRI at any of MMD’s imaging centers, although Greene expects its patient and referrer-friendly advantages to drive a continued shift towards wide-bore 3T MRI systems.

Greene also detailed Memorial MRI’s alliance with United Imaging (the webinar’s sponsor), specifically highlighting the scalability of UIH’s “Software for Life” (scanners automatically updated with future software) and “All-In” (scanners include all possible features/packages) policies.

As the webinar wrapped up, Greene warned imaging centers not to blindly rely on what has worked in the past, predicting that “ease of access is what is going to shape the future of healthcare.” 

The Takeaway

We get plenty of insights from the medical center side of radiology, but it’s still rare to hear from imaging center chains. That makes MDD’s insights particularly useful for the many regional imaging providers who’d like to improve MRI accessibility (without open MRI’s tradeoffs) and for MRI OEMs looking to drive 3T MRI adoption in an imaging provider segment that historically favored 1.5T systems.

Working on your organization’s AI strategy?

This Blackford Analysis post outlines the key considerations for creating your AI goals and strategy, including some you might not have considered.

Novarad’s Simple & Secure Patient Engagement

Evaluating your patient engagement strategy? Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Novarad’s Paul Shumway for a great conversation about how new technologies are helping imaging providers safely and securely improve patient engagement.

The Wire

• BrainKey Adds Genetics: BrainKey added genetics to its unique AI-based brain health analysis platform, joining its existing brain MRI and demographic analysis capabilities. The BrainKey Platform produces reports that help individuals understand their brain health (w/ longitudinal imaging) and the factors influencing their future brain longevity (w/ genetics), potentially allowing early detection and personalized treatments. Although BrainKey is quite unique, its platform leverages a number of imaging-related applications that seem to be gaining momentum, including multimodal analytics, patient-driven preventative imaging, and personalized treatments.

• CEM Reduces Biopsies: Italy-based researchers found that recombined contrast-enhanced mammography (rCEM) exams could significantly reduce biopsy rates following screening recalls compared to standard assessments (SA = additional views, DBT, or ultrasound). The researchers analyzed post-recall assessments from 207 women with 225 suspicious findings, revealing that rCEM would have referred 16.4% fewer women for biopsy than SA (94 vs. 131 biopsies). rCEM achieved 93.8% sensitivity and 65.9% specificity, while each of its five false negatives were ductal carcinoma in situ (earlier-stage, less-invasive).

• FDA Can’t Regulate AI: A new opinion piece in PLOS Digital Health makes the case that AI’s pace of innovation is simply too quick for the FDA to regulate alone, and that a “distributed approach” is needed for proper regulation. The Harvard researchers argue that health systems should self-regulate by developing standards and training protocols that ensure AI tools are safe at the local level, while the FDA should only step in to regulate AI that’s intended for nationwide use or that has a high potential to negatively impact patient health.

• NPPs & Head CTs: Emergency departments’ noncontrast head CT volumes have skyrocketed in recent years, but the growing presence of ED nurse practitioners and physician assistants (NPs/PAs) isn’t to blame. That’s from a new University of Colorado Anschutz study (n = 6,624) that found no significant difference between the rate of pathology-positive head CTs ordered by physicians and NPs/PAs (4.6% vs 3.7%). They did however identify patient and situational factors associated with higher (patient age, daytime exams, indications of malignancy) and lower CT positivity rates (trauma, vertigo/dizziness).

• Veye Lung Validation: A new PLOS One study highlighted Aidence’s Veye Lung Nodules solution’s ability to improve radiologists’ diagnostic performance. The researchers had two radiologists evaluate 470 pulmonary nodules from 337 chest CTs, with and without Veye Lung Nodules, finding that the solution significantly improved lung nodule detection (80.3% w/ AI vs. 71.9% unaided) and “minimally increased” their false positive rates (0.16 vs. 0.11). In fact, this study was used to support Aidence’s CE Mark approval.

• Motilent’s New Funding: Gut-imaging AI startup Motilent secured $1.5M from the UK’s NIHR government agency to support the development and roll-out of its MRI post-processing software GIQuant, which tracks intestinal movement. Motilent will use the new funding to further develop GiQuant, deploy the solution across 10 additional UK hospitals, and study GIQuant’s ability to support the management of Crohn’s Disease.

• CMR for Heart Transplant Monitoring: A team of Australian researchers found that cardiac MRI multiparametric mapping can effectively monitor patients for heart transplant rejection, suggesting that it could become an alternative to invasive endomyocardial biopsy (EMB). Analysis of 401 CMR and 354 EMB patients over a two-year follow-up period (40 w/ heart transplants) found that CMR accurately identified patients who would have rejected transplants (AUC: 0.92; NPV: 99%), while allowing 94% of patients to avoid EMBs (6% of CMR patients later received EMB).

• Parents’ AI Perceptions: A Lurie Children’s Hospital survey (n = 1,620) found that most parents are open to emergency clinicians using AI tools to manage children with respiratory illnesses. The majority of parents were comfortable with the use of AI to assess the need for antibiotics (77.6%) or bloodwork (77.7%), and to interpret radiographs (77.5%). Black parents and parents between 18-25 years reported greater discomfort with AI than White parents (odds ratio: 1.67) and parents over age 46 (odds ratio: 2.48).

• GE Reaching Full Contrast Production: GE Healthcare announced that its Shanghai facility’s production of iodinated contrast media should be close to 100% this week, suggesting that the end of the contrast shortage is in sight. Although many providers will still have to wait for contrast shipments to make their way west, GE will work with customers “to help them plan several weeks ahead as supply progressively recovers.”

• Crowdsourced AI: Historically it’s been difficult to train deep learning models to identify rare injuries, but a recent study published in Skeletal Radiology showed that CNNs trained with images sourced from the internet can successfully identify rare joint dislocations. Researchers trained CNNs using 100 online radiographs of four joints (shoulder, elbow, hip, and hip replacements). When tested against external datasets with 100 corresponding scans, the internet-sourced CNNs achieved high AUCs (0.88-0.99).

• SR Adds RCL: Strategic Radiology (SR) added Radiology Consultants of Lynchburg (11 radiologists, 5 hospitals, 1 imaging center, 45yrs in practice) to its consortium of independent radiology practices. The partnership is SR’s second in Virginia and increases its membership to 32 practices and 1,500+ radiologists.

Effortless & Efficient AI Adoption

Check out this GE Healthcare perspective on imaging AI’s adoption evolution, the AI ecosystem shift, and the importance of seamless AI integration.

The Resource Wire

• See how Einstein Healthcare Network reduced its syringe expenses, enhanced its syringe loading, and improved its contrast documentation when it upgraded to Bayer Radiology’s MEDRAD Stellant FLEX CT Injection System.

• Check out this patient case study showing how the Arterys Chest I MSK AI solution helped emergency physicians spot two rib fractures in a shoulder pain exam that might have gone unnoticed.

• Considering your short and long-term AI plan? Check out Canon Medical’s State of AI Roundtable, sharing insights into how imaging AI is being used, where it’s needed most, and how AI might assume a core role in medical imaging.

• Symbia SPECT/CT has a great history, and there is more to come. Be among the first to see how Siemens Healthineers’ Symbia SPECT/CT is taking major steps in patient access, ease of use, and clinical versatility at their virtual launch event on June 9th.

• Over 9 out of 10 people who should be screened for lung cancer aren’t, and nearly 50% of lung cancer cases are caught in the advanced stages. We know from prostate and breast cancer screening that clear guidelines and increased screening saves lives. But lung cancer screening has been challenging. Riverain strives to make everything about the lungs clearer, so they assembled this resource page for anyone interested in starting or improving their lung screening program.

• Catch the Intelerad team at SIIM 2022 this week, where they’ll be participating in panels discussing the cloud, data anonymization, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (including Intelerad’s partners from RADequal – formerly RADxx).

• Have more echo studies than sonographers? See how Us2.ai was able to classify, segment, and annotate echocardiographic videos with similar accuracy as expert sonographers. 

• Imaging’s cloud evolution didn’t happen all at once. This Change Healthcare animation details the history of digital imaging architectures, and how cloud-native imaging improves stability and scalability, ease of management, patient data security, and operating costs.

• Explore how United Imaging is reinventing the medical imaging business, including downtime rebates, lifetime upgrades, and making sure their customers truly are successful.

• See how the Ochsner Lafayette General health system improved its radiology report quality and efficiency when it migrated to PowerScribe One.

• Women’s imaging has come a long way, but operational efficiency remains a challenge for many facilities. To help address this challenge, this Fujifilm post details the five questions women’s imaging facilities should ask when evaluating workflow management solutions.

• 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.