A tweet from Ben White, MD on how radiologists must train themselves to see what they are looking for.

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Technologists

Technologists in the Spotlight

Radiographers and technologists were at the center of this week’s radiology news cycle, as three unrelated pieces highlighted the crucial role radtechs play, the significant challenges they face, and the actions required to help them succeed.

CXR Call to Action – After finding that nearly half of their portable chest X-ray images were “problematic,” a team of Stony Brook physicians issued a “call to action” to better support radiology technologists. Analysis of 500 portable CXRs found 231 problematic exams (46.2%), which most commonly occurred during overnight shifts (48%), and often stemmed from patient positioning issues. 

• A focus group featuring six technologist department managers led the authors to propose three additional RT resources: (1) creating ongoing training programs focused on patient positioning, (2) assigning nurses to assist technologists during exams, 3) tasking internal medicine residents with reviewing CXRs before they’re sent to radiologists.

Big Teams, Little Training – The UK’s Society of Radiographers highlighted radiography managers’ struggles with high workloads and insufficient training (n = 200), finding that many of these leaders directly manage over 20 or 30 employees (52% & 40%… yikes) and never received manager training from their hospital (45%).

• The authors called these huge team sizes and lack of training a “gross miscalculation,” warning that it will cause managers to “undoubtedly fail in their duty of care to their staff,” especially considering that managers are often pulled into clinical duties due to understaffing.

Patient Safety’s Last Step – The WHO partnered with the ISRRT and ISR to emphasize radiographers and radtechs’ role as “the last step” in patient safety and medicine delivery, filling in gaps missed by radiation and magnetic safety experts. The collaborative webinar addressed radiographers/technologists’ responsibilities for ensuring safe contrast and radiopharmaceutical use, maintaining pediatric imaging best practices, and ensuring that pre-administration processes are complete before medication delivery. 

The Takeaway

We talk a lot about modality-based approaches to improve radtech efficiency and reduce team burnout, and those are surely needed. However, this week’s news cycle was a solid reminder of HR’s role in technologist performance and what’s at stake if techs aren’t properly supported, trained, and staffed.

RMI Sees Clearly and Decides Confidently

See how adopting ClearRead CT allowed Michigan’s Regional Medical Imaging’s radiologists to complete their chest CT reads faster and more accurately in this Riverain Technologies case study.

Unleash the Power of the Cloud

Change Healthcare’s cloud-native, zero-footprint Stratus Imaging PACS is live in clinical use. See how Stratus Imaging PACS is helping radiology practices improve productivity and patient care, while eliminating the cost and resource constraints of on-premise systems.

The Wire

• Multi-Institutional Data Harvesting: Nature detailed a multi-institutional data harvesting (MIDH) method that was able to analyze imaging utilization and reporting trends across multiple health systems. The researchers repurposed Aidoc’s PE AI and NLP solutions to identify and evaluate CTPA exams performed at 13 US intuitions before and during COVID’s 2020 peak. The analysis revealed COVID-driven declines in CTPA exams (9,806 vs. 12,106) and a significant increase in PE positivity rates (11.6% vs. 9.9%), while showing how AI-based MIDH could help improve our understanding of how imaging is changing.

• Change’s Stratus Launch: Change Healthcare officially launched its cloud-native and SaaS-based Stratus Imaging PACS to the radiology practice market. This a key milestone for the cloud-centric PACS vendor, coming roughly one year after launching to beta users and two years after acquiring Nucleus.io. It could also prove to be a key milestone for radiology practices’ cloud adoption, noting how well their needs align with the cloud value proposition (security, IT labor, cost structure, speed), and the expanding field of practice-targeted cloud solutions that are now becoming available to them.

• Cardiac Nuclear-CT Guidelines: The ASNC and three other major nuclear imaging and cardiac CT societies released a new set of guidelines for using hybrid nuclear-CT cardiac imaging. The 45-page guideline goes step-by-step on how to prepare a lab for cardiac SPECT/CT and PET/CT imaging, including new recommended training requirements, models for cross-specialty study interpretation, and suggested solutions for reimbursement challenges.

• Incepto Adds €27M: French AI platform company Incepto raised €27M (total funding now €32.6M) to fund its expansion across Europe, including the creation of four new subsidiaries in Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Incepto will also use the funds to support its three strategic objectives: (1) creating a robust panel of AI partner solutions, (2) collaborating with physicians to develop applications that support unmet needs (e.g. knee MRI diagnostic assistance), and (3) supporting imaging organizations’ AI transformations.

• Incepto’s Partner Expansion: Speaking of Incepto’s goal to expand its partner list, the European AI platform company announced the addition of five new AI partners (IB Lab, Milvue, PAIRE, SmartSoft, Thirona) that expand its portfolio into key clinical areas (emergency care, oncology, orthopedics, rheumatology, and pneumology). These partnerships nearly double Incepto’s current list of seven AI partners, which includes a number of leading AI players (e.g. Subtle, ScreenPoint, Qure.ai, Aidence, Gleamer).

• Predicting PTC Recurrence with ETE: New research out of China found that clinicians can predict tumor recurrence in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) based on the presence of extrathyroidal extension (ETE) in ultrasound exams. Among 863 patients with PTC (59 w/ recurrence), preoperative lateral cervical lymph node metastasis was found more often in patients with ETE and extensive ETE detected, while microscopic ETE did not predict recurrence. 

• New York’s Unused X-Rays: The state of New York spent $250M on medical technology during the COVID pandemic, including $86.4M on 1,179 X-ray machines, and all of these devices have gone unused since they were purchased in March 2020. That’s from a Politico report, also revealing that the National Guard is managing New York’s medical technology stockpile in warehouses, and there are no current plans to distribute them or put them to immediate use.  

• DBT-Guided Biopsy Advantages: Johns Hopkins researchers showed that DBT-guided biopsies of suspicious breast calcifications produce similar clinical results as digital mammography-guided biopsies, but reduce patient discomfort and radiation exposure. Analysis of 1,310 patients’ biopsies (1,006 w/ DBT; 348 w/ DM) found no significant difference in malignancy rates (22% vs. 23%), while the DBT-guided biopsy had much lower procedure times (14.9 vs. 24.7) and total exposures (4.1 vs. 9.1).

• CT Nomogram Lung Cancer Detection: A new AJR study detailed a nomogram combining clinical data and CT-based radiomics that was able to accurately differentiate pneumonia from pneumonia-type invasive mucinous adenocarcinoma (IMA; a lung cancer). Using data from 314 patients for training, validation, and external testing (208 w/ pneumonia; 106 w/ pneumonia-type IMA), the nomogram differentiated the pneumonia types more accurate than a clinical model and two cardiothoracic radiologists (AUCs: 0.85 vs. 0.71 & 0.70 & 0.67).

• Konica Minolta’s DDR CSA Clearance: Konica Minolta announced the FDA clearance of its Chiropractic Straight Arm System, featuring the company’s unique dynamic digital radiography (DDR) technology, which allows clinicians to view anatomical movement from rapidly-acquired X-ray images. This might be the first chiropractic product launch we’ve covered, but DDR’s ability to show how bone and tissue interact over time seems to make it a good fit for this space (and the clinical MSK space too).

• Kaiser Scores Beat BI-RADS: A new study in EJR highlighted how Kaiser Scores (KS) can help clinicians accurately distinguish between malignant and benign breast lesions on contrast-enhanced mammography, avoiding up to 47.9% of unnecessary biopsies. Among 359 patients with breast lesions (231 malignant and 144 benign), the study’s two readers distinguished lesions with higher AUCs using KS compared to BI-RADS (Reader 1: 0.915 vs. 0.821; Reader 2:0.876 vs. 0.842).

Is your MRI Fit for the Future?

See how upgrading to Siemens Healthineers’ BioMatrix scanner can allow you to meet rising demand and improve your MRI workflows without the costs and disruptions of moving to a completely new MRI.

How Thomas Jefferson Leveraged CARPL.ai

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.

The Resource Wire

• Despite significant interest, there’s still confusion about the value of imaging AI. This Blackford Analysis white paper explores the key cost considerations and ROI factors that radiology groups can use to figure out how to make AI valuable for them.

• Ready to overcome the worklist paradox of choice? See how GE Healthcare’s Intelligent Workload Manager eliminates case selection decision-making burdens and helps reduce radiologist stress.

• Take the AiCE challenge and see why half the radiologists in a recent study “had difficulty differentiating” images from Canon Medical Systems’ Vantage Orian 1.5T MR using its AiCE reconstruction technology compared to standard 3T MRI images.

• See how the Hyperfine Swoop Portable MRI is able to bring neuroimaging to the point of care, improving healthcare operations and patient outcomes.

• Us2.ai’s echocardiography analysis automation solution is being integrated into the EchoNous Kosmos ultrasound platform, creating the most powerful diagnostic “power tool” ever created for the hand-carried POCUS market. 

• Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Novarad founder and CEO, Wendell Gibby, MD, exploring Novarad’s technological evolution and how its recent augmented reality expansion is bringing medical imaging into completely new clinical settings.

• Bayer’s cloud-based Calantic Digital Solutions AI platform features a suite of disease-specific AI apps that integrate into radiologist workflows, helping radiology teams scale AI deployment and improve efficiency and quality of care.

• annalise.ai’s Annalise CXR solution detects up to 124 findings in a single chest X-ray. See how it detects such a wide range of abnormalities using these demo studies…  or upload your own CXR images.

• See how Enlitic’s mission to create time for radiologists led to its shift from point solutions towards enterprise-level solutions that are fundamental to workflow.

• With ongoing radiologist shortages and higher rates of burnout, there’s a great need for fast, effective, efficient medical imaging technologies – and those factors are driving 2022’s major medical imaging trends detailed in this Arterys report.

• See how Dr. Carolyn Lam evolved from a women’s heart health trailblazer to co-founding Us2.ai and automating the fight against heart disease.

• Can culture be the foundation of your strategy? See how adopting a culture-led strategy has become an advantage for United Imaging and its clients in this essay by CEO, Jeffrey Bundy.

• See how Valley Radiology’s decision to make Intelerad IntelePACS its single reading environment helped the independent practice gain control of its growing volumes and rising case complexity, improve its efficiency and radiologist experience, and deliver better patient care.