By now most of you will have your February JDI and you may have noticed the new feature at the back of the issue called TechBits. In this column, I will attempt to bring entertaining, informative, and probably mostly off-topic suggestions for technology that readers may want to investigate for themselves. When I am the author, the opinions, which are not particularly scientific, are mine alone. I want to encourage others to suggest columns or to send me an email with a column idea that they many want to author. I hope this will be an enjoyable feature of JDI.

 So, now to Google Rocks. I have received emails suggesting that I left out some great Google features, and indeed …

SIIM arranged for Springer to digitize all the old issues of JDI, 1988 – 2000.  They are now available as open access on SpringerLink.  Go to Springer and access 20+ years of JDI issues.  I plan to review some of these historical articles and suggest some of them to our newer members so they can see how far we’ve come since the beginning of JDI.

Everyone has seen the announcement of the iPad from Apple, the new device that will change everything….  I confess, I love gadgets and will probably have one almost as soon as it is available. 

Here are some interesting things for us to think about.  Today CoActive Medical announced their app for the iPad called EXAM-PACS.  They have an app for the iPhone and announce that it will work on the iPad and will be compatible with the iPad 3G model to be released in April.  I was unable to find any information on EXAM-PACS imaging for the iPhone, but I do not have their PACS and it may be an app only for their customers.

When I think about  medical image viewing software …

Please do what you can to help the relief effort in Haiti.  Personally, I support the American Red Cross, I know they’re a reputable organization and that my support will be used where it is needed most.

The centers for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) announced a proposed rule to implement provisions of the American Reinvestment and Recovery act that provide incentive payments for the meaningful use of certified EHR technology on December 30, 2009. 

 The proposed incentive programs will provide incentive payments to eligible professionals, hospitals  that are either meaningful users of EHR technology or for efforts to adopt, implement or upgrade certified EHR technology or for meaningful use in the first year of their participation in the program and for demonstrating meaningful use during each of five subsequent years.

 So what exactly is “meaningful use”?  That’s not quite defined.  So far it looks like this:

 Stage 1 criteria for meaningful use focuses on electronically capturing health information in …

New Year’s resolutions are a tradition – so I guess I’ll make one or two…..

My first resolution – out in the open for everyone at SIIM to see is my resolution to participate in the 2010 SIIM fun run at the annual meeting in Minneapolis.  This is a big thing for me; I don’t run so I’ll have to get started.  Everyone will be able to see if I can do it and if I keep this resolution. 

My second SIIM – related resolution is to keep up with my SIIM email better.  I almost never get “good” email there so it’s easy to avoid. 

I think that once again I’ll resolve not to procrastinate – that’s a recurring resolution.  But I …

The December issue of the Journal of Digital Imaging features a great collection of articles covering the latest in medical imaging informatics research and news. Dr. Janice Honeyman-Buck’s “From the Editor’s Desk” highlights some of this issue’s articles, and can be found here: http://bit.ly/83JXag

JDI Volume 22:6 contains the following articles:

• 11 articles on Technical Imaging Informatics.
• 3 articles on Clinical Imaging Informatics.
• The first in a series of commentaries by Dr. Bruce Reiner on the evolution of reporting radiological findings.
• A letter to the editor from Dr. James Chen and colleagues commenting on two JDI articles on speech recognition and report workflow (published in the December 2008 issue of JDI).

SIIM members can log in through the SIIM website http://bit.ly/8H45ur for full access …

Xiaojiang Yang and his colleagues from the Mayo Clinic Medical Imaging Informatics Innovation Center, Rochester, MN,  describe their work in evaluating an automatic CAD system for detecting intracranial aneurysms.  Advances in MRA have allowed visualization of these often fatal vessel deformities, but for small aneurysms, MRA sensitivity is poor.  One recent case series reported a sensitivity of only 35% for small aneurysms using MRA.

This research group developed algorithms for automatically detecting potential small aneurysms and then assigning a probability that the detected object was, indeed, an aneurysm.  They tested their algorithms on 287 MRA studies in patients who had undergone Digital Subtraction Angiography.  147 ground truth aneurysms were identified in 92 studies which included 55 small (<5mm diameter) and 92 …

Lately I’ve heard several people voice frustration over the problems importing radiology studies on CDs from outside an institution into a PACS archive.  It’s important to be able to do this for patient care, and the treating physician needs to be able to view the images using existing workstations or web-based solutions, but in order for a study to be verified as correct, it needs an accession number.  This requires creating an order for each study on each CD  prior to importing the images.  Technically, it’s a solvable issue, but logistically, someone has to place the order with the correct study date and description, patient information, etc.  And if the ability to import CDs is distributed throughout an institution, the …