Health Imaging & IT - December 2008 - (Page 30)

When to Use CAD in Breast Imaging much help. But for inexperienced readers, it is more beneficial since it will find more lesions,” he says, adding that what the technology still lacks is the ability to characterize lesions or calcifications. “In Europe, we don’t get reimbursed for using CAD, but if you decide to use it, you should use it on every case to be secure that you are choosing the right lesions for scrutinizing.” Wynn W. Adams, medical director of Kettering Breast Evaluation Centers in Ohio, agrees that mammography CAD is an addon tool, highlighting areas of suspicion for lesions 1 cm or less in size as well as calcifications. “We are finding more things to look at and question as we become more digital and iCAD’s SecondLook Digital CAD technology is helpful in analyzing areas of suspicion.” For Adams, CAD usage is not a necessary component of mammography work- flow. “You don’t have to use it, but it is occasionally helpful,” she says. “It makes you feel a little more secure, but often it isn’t really going to add very much more that a radiologist isn’t capable of seeing for himself or herself.” Breast MRI CAD in the clinical routine While CAD for mammography is more like a “spell-checker” for radiologists to flag potential findings that might get overlooked, CAD for breast MRI is slightly different, proving useful, not as an add-on tool, or “spell-checker,” but as an integral component in the clinical routine. “It is not a second reader, or early detection tool—it serves more as a computer-aided evaluation and visualization tool,” says David R. Gruen, director of the Connecticut Breast Center at Norwalk Radiology in Connecticut, and assistant chief of medical staff at Norwalk Hospital, who uses CADstream breast MRI CAD from Confirma. What matters in breast MRI interpretation are both the morphology of a lesion, its shape, and the kinetics of the lesion, how it accumulates the intravenous gadolinium and subsequently washes out. “The reason this is important is that malignancies tend to take up intravenous contrast rapidly and then tend to wash out the contrast rapidly as well. So when you put this together— abnormal morphology and suspicious (type III) kinetics—you start to get a reasonable positive predictive value for something you might need to biopsy,” Gruen says. What CAD brings to this mix is a reasonable way to organize the data, since the software is good at locating suspicious areas 25th Annual Conference and Exhibition Palm Springs, California | February 1-5, 2009 Rehydrating Health IT TEPR+ will: + Guide healthcare professionals into an era of Participatory Care, where patients use technology to take an active role in their care + Demonstrate how the new capabilities of mobile phones can be used to connect patients, healthcare providers, payers, and others + Prepare health IT leaders and stakeholders for the Patient-centered Medical Home (PCMH), a setting that uses IT to better link patients to their providers + Show hospital executives how to create interoperability between their health IT platforms and outside providers visit us online at www.TEPR.com Explore Compelling Options for Smarter Healthcare 30 Health Imaging & IT | December 2008 sign up for only $595! Valid until 12/19/08 Visit us online for the most updated prices. HealthImaging.com http://www.TEPR.com http://www.TEPR.com http://www.HealthImaging.com

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Health Imaging & IT - December 2008 Table of Contents The Enterprise News Update Technology at Work: What You Need to Compete Why 1.5T MRI is Leading the Pack Workflow Strategies Aid Advanced Visualization Deployment Illuminating Reading Room Design for Better Reading Strategies Cardiac SPECT Sharpens its Focus OrthoPACS: The Information Backbone of the Orthopedic Clinic Imaging Tools Reader's Resource

Health Imaging & IT - December 2008

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