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Lung Cancer Mystery, Helium Shortage, and CCTA in Young Adults
July 23, 2026
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Together with
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“[T]he next generation of radiology leaders won’t necessarily be defined by the biggest portfolios. They’ll be the companies that solve meaningful clinical challenges while successfully scaling their commercial, clinical applications and service organisations. Innovation creates opportunity, but execution is what turns great technology into market leaders.”
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Alex Henman of executive recruiting firm Projectus.
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All eyes have turned to radiology reporting as imaging facilities look to upgrade their reporting platforms. But one wrinkle many haven’t considered is how reporting software can serve as the foundation for AI deployment. Learn more in this contribution from Microsoft.
With the excitement of the World Cup over, we now seem to have entered the dog days of summer. Enjoy it while it lasts – we’ll soon start planning for RSNA 2026! – Brian Casey, Managing Editor
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One of the emerging mysteries around lung cancer is why it occurs so often in people who don’t smoke – particularly in Asia. A new paper in JAMA Network Open investigates the phenomenon by presenting results from South Korea indicating that established screening criteria would have missed nearly two-thirds of lung cancer patients.
From its earliest days, CT lung screening has been targeted at heavy smokers who have the greatest chance of developing lung cancer.
- Risk-based criteria determine who should be screened, usually based on some metric of smoking history (such as the USPSTF’s 20-pack-year threshold).
But many countries that have had national lung screening programs in place for a while – mostly in Asia – are learning that lung cancer also occurs in people who have never smoked at all.
- Whether and how to screen these individuals has become the subject of debate.
In the current study, researchers from South Korea examined 89.9k patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer from 2013 to 2018, just before the country started its national lung screening program in 2019.
- Researchers focused on whether patients would have been eligible for screening under established criteria, such as from the USPSTF, ACS, and NCCN.
Among people diagnosed with lung cancer…
- 65% would not have been eligible for lung screening under international guidelines.
- 44% had no smoking history.
- Screening eligibility differed sharply by sex, with men eligible at far higher rates than women (57% vs. 2.3%).
- Smokers who weren’t eligible for screening had 5% lower rates of all-cause mortality and 4% lower lung cancer-specific mortality than smokers who were.
- People who had never smoked had 14% lower rates of both all-cause and lung cancer-specific mortality.
The data point out an interesting dilemma inherent in CT lung cancer screening, which from the outset was set up to be risk-based rather than population-based like mammography to avoid many of screening’s downsides, like overdiagnosis.
- But that approach is missing many people who would otherwise benefit from screening, especially as we learn more about the elevated risk among many non-smoking populations, such as East Asian women.
The Takeaway
The new study shows momentum building toward broader CT lung cancer screening criteria that go beyond smoking status. The question is how quickly such criteria are adopted, and whether they gain traction outside of Asia, where recognition of lung cancer among non-smokers is growing.
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Innovation for the Imaging Workflows You Deserve
Radiologists are overwhelmed by complex systems and growing caseloads. Workflow orchestration offers a smarter approach. Find out how solutions from Merge can integrate various PACS, RIS, and EMR systems into a single AI-driven workspace.
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Reimbursement for AI-Powered CAC Scoring
Medicare reimbursement for AI-powered coronary artery calcium scoring is now available with code G0680. Find out how it can impact your practice – and your patients – in this video interview with Riverain Technologies.
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AI-Powered Referral Automation
Radiology teams are drowning in referrals, and a huge chunk of that burden is purely administrative. Kailo Medical built a solution to fix that: An AI-powered referral automation workflow that handles the full intake process. Find out how it works today.
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- Helium Shortage Hits Indian Hospital: A hospital in India has enough helium in stock to power just one more week of MRI operation. Wenlock District Hospital in Mangaluru has only about 5% of its usual helium inventory, and has already reduced the number of MRI scans it is performing from 13 per day to around five or six. What’s more, the price of helium has nearly tripled, from $18.70 per liter to $51.90. Helium supplies worldwide have been impacted by the ongoing war in the Middle East.
- Reporting Platform As AI Strategy: The radiology reporting platform was once known as a workflow tool. But now reporting serves as the foundation of radiology’s AI strategy, and the way we evaluate it must change as well. That’s according to a contribution from Microsoft that examines the evolution of radiology reporting into a technology that’s integrated into workflow and that will enable organizations to modernize at their own pace without disrupting care.
- CCTA Finds Atherosclerosis in Younger Adults: Coronary CT angiography scans found a high rate of atherosclerosis in younger adults – and it’s a trend that has clinical consequences. Among 10.2k people (median age = 47) who received CCTA scans from 2006 to 2021, 29% had non-obstructive plaque and 8.7% had obstructive coronary artery disease. Over a median follow-up of 6.7 years, those with obstructive CAD had a higher adjusted risk of cardiac events (aHR = 2.6). CCTA could be used for early risk stratification and to guide preventive strategies.
- Imaging Shows Accelerated Brain Aging: A new paper in PLOS Medicine suggests that imaging can show how some neurological conditions can age the brain beyond its years. Researchers compared MRI scans of 3k patients with brain disorders against 45.9k controls to measure gaps between chronological and biological brain ages. Addiction, psychiatric conditions, and especially dementia had the biggest impact, but developmental disorders like autism and ADHD didn’t. But the observational study didn’t account for the high comorbidity of addiction and psychiatric issues.
- CT Detects Dietary Biomarkers: Diet and lifestyle changes can affect onset of mild cognitive impairment (and later Alzheimer’s disease), and CT can detect the brain biomarkers that illustrate the phenomenon. In a new study in JRRAS, researchers scanned 237 people, 113 of whom received a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle modifications like low-intensity exercise. CT scans at 20 weeks showed that people in the intervention group had less severe global cortical atrophy and better preservation of medial temporal lobe structures – signs that the lifestyle changes were affecting brain health.
- Could GLP-1s Cut Muscle Mass? A Radiology study showed that weight cyclers experienced 4X more thigh muscle loss on MRI scans than noncyclers (4% vs. 1%), even after returning to baseline weight. The findings raise red flags: Muscle mass is a biomarker for metabolism, osteoarthritis, and even mortality. While GLP-1s are gaining attention as a way to drop weight fast, the side effects and high costs that cause many to pause treatment are less discussed. Though GLP-1s weren’t the focus of the study, weight fluctuations associated with their start-and-stop use may lead to similar results.
- GE Makes Remote Reading Easier: GE HealthCare is expanding virtual access to imaging data through its new MIM Anyware software. The collaboration-focused platform allows multiple users across different health systems to join the same MIM session simultaneously via web browser – no downloads required. GE’s MIM software already provides >40 unique applications to more than 3k organizations across the world, and Anyware may be able to boost both their reach and impact on radiology.
- PE-RADS Guides Pulmonary Embolism Care: Radiology’s successful Reporting and Data System (RADS) terminology for standardizing how radiologists report imaging exams has a new member: PE-RADS, for reporting pulmonary embolism cases. PE-RADS was released this week in a new paper in Radiology, and, like other RADS nomenclatures, uses a four-point scale to describe disease severity. The scale is based on the anatomic location of the most proximal thrombus, with PE-RADS 4 referring to a thrombus in the central pulmonary arteries.
- Radiology Partners Makes Exec Moves: Radiology Partners bolstered the executive lineup of its RP Clinical Services division by naming Matt Peterson as president. Peterson joins RP from Universal Health Services, where he led the company’s behavioral health division. In another move at RP Clinical Services, the company tapped radiologist Krishna Nallamshetty, MD, to be full-time chief operating officer after he served as interim COO since December. Nallamshetty will also serve as interim chief medical officer as RP begins a search for a full-time CMO.
- POCUS for Vascular Access: Fujifilm Sonosite released a new offering in its iLOOK point-of-care ultrasound line dedicated to guiding vascular access at the bedside. Equipped with B-mode, color velocity Doppler, and color power Doppler settings, Sonosite iLOOK can be used for a wide variety of catheterizations, and also boasts a six-ounce wireless transducer and on-board charging dock. The original iLOOK series was a big deal when it launched more than two decades ago, giving clinicians a cheap and lightweight alternative to cart-based ultrasound systems.
- Gender Trends in Senior Authorship: It’s still relatively rare to find female senior authors on radiology research studies. A new study in Academic Radiology found that among 3.7k papers published in seven imaging journals, about 18% had female senior authors. But the rate varied by journal, with policy- and practice-focused journals having higher rates, topped by JACR’s 37% and Korean Journal of Radiology’s 43%. Some institutions had markedly higher female senior authorship rates, like the University of Toronto (41%) and Harvard (40%).
- New Foundation Model for Chest X-Ray: A new AI foundation model for chest X-ray has been released by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania. Called CLEAR (Concept-Level Embeddings for Auditable Radiology), the model is described in a new paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering as having been trained on data from 239k patients from publicly available databases. CLEAR uses an auditable model in which its predictions can be traced back to individual radiological observations, addressing the “black box” problem often found with radiology AI.
- Rads Fooled By AI: Researchers once again found that radiologists struggle to spot AI-generated medical images. A new Clinical Radiology study asked 182 radiologists to classify images as real or fake, then rate their confidence in these decisions on a one-to-five scale. Median accuracy was 78%, backed by an average confidence score of ~3.5. Modality mattered, with ultrasound (88%) and X-ray (91%) more likely to be correctly identified than cross-sectional scans, like CT (70%) and MRI (77%).
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More than an Image. The Big Picture
AGFA HealthCare understands that striking the critical balance between clinical efficiency and quality delivery of patient care starts with the clinician experience. Learn how their Enterprise Imaging platform makes the complex simple.
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Elevating Outpatient Imaging in Texas
River Oaks MRI & Diagnostic in Texas was founded on a simple but powerful idea: to bring high-quality, accessible imaging to the local community. Learn how they turned to United Imaging to help realize their vision.
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AI Echo in Community Heart Failure Screening
Breathlessness affects 10% of the adult population and can be a symptom of heart failure. Learn how a community-based program in the U.K. is using AI-assisted echocardiography from Us2.ai to achieve guideline-directed diagnostic quality in a community setting.
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- Reimagining Cloud-Native Cardiology Workflow: Find out how Intelerad’s next-generation cloud-based InteleHeart solution delivers an all-in-one cardiology platform that unifies viewing, reporting, analytics, and workflow orchestration.
- Still Managing Multiple Imaging Silos? Consolidate imaging access and simplify clinical workflows with Mach7 enterprise imaging solutions. Modernize your imaging with Mach7 Technologies.
- What Everyone Should Know About Radiology: What should every medical student know about radiology? In this episode of The Joys of Radiology, a Medality Radiology Report podcast, Gautam Agrawal, MD, sits down with three Johns Hopkins radiology residents to discuss what residency actually looks like.
- Elevating Breast Cancer Detection: Breast Suite from DeepHealth is a new package of AI-powered solutions delivering increased breast cancer detection rates, risk stratification tools, and viewing and reporting workflow acceleration. Find out how it can benefit your practice today.
- Increase Radiologist Productivity in DEXA Reporting: Manually dictating DEXA measurements into structured reports is time-consuming and creates unnecessary workload for radiologists. In this case study, discover how Tower Saint John’s Imaging used Altamont Software’s Passport SR to eliminate manual dictation of DEXA measurements.
- Smarter CT at Lower Dose: Meet Verida, the latest in Philips’ new CT fleet, built for smarter imaging, less complexity, and lower dose. Verida combines AI-powered reconstruction with advanced spectral imaging for consistent results and streamlined workflows – scan after scan.
- Don’t Leave Your Patients in the Dark: Top institutions like Duke and Northwell Health are using patient-friendly radiology reports from Scanslated to boost patient engagement and satisfaction. Discover how Scanslated can work for you today.
- Staying Competitive with New Technology: Nashville General Hospital aimed to enhance their CT and mammography systems to remain competitive, and Fujifilm stood out as the right fit. Learn how they boosted efficiency with Fujifilm’s Scenaria View CT scanner and ASPIRE Cristalle mammography system.
- One Viewer for All: Achieve ultrafast image interpretation with greater efficiency and precision with Visage 7 from Visage Imaging. Visage’s one-viewer philosophy enables all end users – from radiologists to clinicians – to access powerful tools based on clinical need.
- How Many Clicks Did You Waste Today? Radiologists deserve better than outdated reporting. Modern AI-powered reporting reduces cognitive burden, minimizes repetitive tasks, and helps you focus on the reads that matter most. Book a demo to see how you can cut clicks in half with Rad AI.
- A Breakthrough in Imaging Data Standardization: Enlitic’s Ensight 2.2 is a breakthrough in imaging data standardization that gives health systems a clearer, more detailed understanding of imaging data, accelerating the path from implementation to impact. Find out what it can do for you today.
- Rapid AI Deployment in Emergency Care: University Hospitals used CARPL to deploy AZmed’s fracture detection tool directly in the emergency department, reducing interpretation time by 30% without disrupting workflows. Learn how UH accelerated AI deployment.
- Leadership in Life Sciences: Quibim is committed to accelerating its development within the life sciences sector and strengthening collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies. Learn about recent leadership developments that are moving the company forward.
- The World’s Happiest Customers – 13 Straight Years: Sectra continues to top the charts when it comes to customer satisfaction. The company recently won seven Best in KLAS awards, including the 13th straight for its Sectra PACS enterprise imaging solution. Find out why on this page.
- Imaging Tools for Heroes: Radiology departments are currently pushed to their limits by interconnected challenges. Staff shortages and heavy workloads form a vicious circle. Different measures are needed to address these challenges. Intelligent imaging from Siemens Healthineers can be one of them.
- The Modern Way to Send and Receive Medical Images: Medicom Connect enables you to automate clinical image exchange across your healthcare ecosystem with workflows that automatically find, retrieve, and deliver images directly to the point of care, improving access and care coordination. Learn more about Medicom’s solutions today.
- Tackling Radiology’s Capacity Issue: Healthcare providers are under pressure from rising costs, care delays, and growing cybersecurity risks. Watch this video to discover how Mosaic Clinical Technologies delivers a future-ready imaging solution that improves continuity of care and accelerates detection for faster, more appropriate interventions.
- The Power to Explore Further: The SIGNA Sprint MRI scanner from GE HealthCare combines exceptional power at 1.5T with brilliant intelligence from their deep-learning solutions. Learn how it can help you unlock the full clinical potential of MRI.
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