Health Imaging & IT - June 2008 - (Page 22)

special secTiOn MOlecular iMaging By Beth Walsh Good Image Management Infiltrating Molecular Imaging The growing interest in nuclear medicine, especially the surge in hybrid imaging, calls for good workflow and plenty of storage. PET/CT and SPECT/CT are changing the way cancer is detected and tracked so vendors of information systems, PACS and software vendors are offering solutions designed to meet the new image management landscape. It’s really demanding to manage images acquired in nuclear medicine, says Munir Ghesani, MD, clinical director of Nuclear Medicine at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He points out that most advances in imaging over the past several decades have been in anatomic imaging. Imaging is designed to help physicians see, for example, when a node reaches a certain size and therefore becomes more predictive of cancer. However, “not all lymph nodes involved in cancer are 1 cm or larger,” he says. Adding the molecular imaging component lets clinicians use biomarkers to detect malignant metabolic activity. That requires equipment that allows for both kinds of imaging in one procedure. PET/CT does just that. Good image management calls for specialized systems that combine both images so that when a clinician is scrolling through image planes, all applicable parameters are available as part of the review. revolutionary changes These changes in detecting and tracking cancer are “so revolutionary” that they have usurped the traditional criteria—based on structural changes—for cancer response, Ghesani says. As a result, Ghesani established a new imaging workflow when his facility installed MIMfusion from MIMvista. Since the images are very memory-intensive—with each requiring about onequarter of a gigabyte—a smooth system was crucial. Routine image comparison requires that images are saved either on optical disks from the scanner itself or on PACS. Every patient study goes to PACS and physicians read studies right on the PACS and separately review molecular images on another workstation. Rapid, easy access to studies is vital, Ghesani says. “We have a very elaborate IS group that is always looking for solutions.” IS uses a modular disk format and maintains dedicated storage space for nuclear medicine. As storage space runs out, a new slot 22 Health Imaging & IT | June 2008 HealthImaging.com http://HealthImaging.com

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Health Imaging & IT - June 2008 Contents On The Web The Enterprise News Update Cover Story: Pushing Productivity: How Imaging is Building Efficiency and Cutting Costs Technology Outlook: Imaging Procedures Poised for Growth Great Expectations: PET/CT Delivers SPECT/CT Proving it's Potential MR/PET Holds Promise Good Image Management: Infiltrating Molecular Imaging SNM Preview Modality Review: Mammography’s Next Step: The Dawning of Breast Tomosynthesis Managing Technology: Radiation Oncology: Opening the Doors to IT Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - June 2008

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