Court hearings have begun in the case of a California radiologist who drove his family off a cliff in 2023, according to an article published by SFist. Attorneys for Dharmesh Patel, MD, who drove his family off a Northern California cliff in a Tesla in January 2023, are seeking a mental health diversion to avoid prison time and instead seek psychological treatment. The four passengers of the vehicle, which included the parents and two children, survived the 250-ft fall. A psychologist testified that in jailhouse interviews with Patel, he deemed that Patel had depressive disorder with psychotic ..read more

Accuray will showcase its radiation therapy technologies at the upcoming European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) annual meeting being held May 3 to 7 in Glasgow, Scotland. The company plans to highlight its Radixact System with a built-in CT scanner, CyberComm, and Cenos technologies. Additionally, the company will host a symposium and webinar at the conference ..read more

Provisio Medical's Sonic Lumen Technology (SLT) Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) system has been granted 510(k) clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). SLT provides automatic, real-time, numeric measurements of the flow lumen of blood vessels without the complexities of image interpretation, the company said. It consists of the SLT IVUS P1 System and the SLT IVUS Support Crossing Catheter; the catheter is an over-the-wire intravascular ultrasound catheter with an ultrasound transducer array at the distal end, which also works as a support crossing catheter. Information from th ..read more

Italian medical device vendor Esaote posted increased revenues for fiscal year 2023, citing upticks in sales in its ultrasound and MRI segments. Financial results for the company's full fiscal year (end-December 31) showed revenues of 273.2 million euros ($292 million), up 6.5% over fiscal year 2022. Sales increased in all business lines, especially in the ultrasound segment (9.7%), driven by the launch in early 2023 of its MyLabTMX90 cart system, Esaote said. The company’s MRI sector was up 3.3% over fiscal year 2022, driven by sales of its Magnifico Open "total-body" open magnet system. The ..read more

Tampa, FL-based radiology AI software company NewVue has entered a partnership with imaging equipment and IT services company Electromek Diagnostic Systems. Under the agreement, Electromek will market, promote, and resell NewVue's primary offering, EmpowerSuite, across the U.S. EmpowerSuite is a radiology workflow management platform designed to optimize radiology operations, eliminate the need for multiple worklists, and reduce administrative burdens, NewVue said. The agreement was effective March 1, according to the firm ..read more

ChatGPT-4 is not a reliable source for answering patients’ questions regarding cancer, a study published April 24 in The Lancet Digital Health found. Researchers led by Danielle Bitterman, MD, from Mass General Brigham in Boston, MA, found that ChatGPT-4 generated acceptable messages to patients without any additional editing by radiation oncologists 58% of the time, and 7% of responses generated by GPT-4 were deemed unsafe by the radiation oncologists if left unedited. “Taking the collective evidence as a whole, I would still consider generative AI for patient messaging at its current stage t ..read more

ChatGPT-4 received a score of 58% on an exam by the American College of Radiology (ACR) used to assess the skills of diagnostic and interventional radiology residents, according to a study published April 22 in Academic Radiology. A team at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY, prompted ChatGPT-4 to answer 106 questions on the ACR’s Diagnostic Radiology In-Training (DXIT) exam, with its performance underscoring both the chatbot’s potential and risks as a diagnostic tool, noted lead author David Payne, MD, and colleagues. “While minimally prompted GPT-4 was seen to make many impressive obs ..read more

Waltham, MA-based clinical trial imaging services provider Voiant and Dutch AI software developer Thirona have entered a global commercial partnership. The partnership combines Voiant's expertise in supporting clinical trials in pulmonary drug and treatment development with Thirona's AI software for lung image analysis. The companies will offer an integrated platform designed to deliver precise imaging endpoints in trials. Voiant's network includes more than 400 certified clinical trial sites, while Thirona's software products include algorithms for chest CT image analysis ..read more

Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) white blood cell SPECT/CT imaging may be useful for identifying diabetic patients at risk of amputations due to foot infections, according to a study published April 22 in Scientific Reports. Researchers at Soonchunhyang University in Seoul, South Korea, found that patients were more likely to undergo amputations when they had high Tc-99m-labeled white blood cell activity at infection sites compared to patients with lower activity. The marker could help identify which patients need more aggressive interventions to avoid amputations, the group suggested. “There is no eff ..read more

Over a five-year period, a clinical practice lung cancer screening program at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, found more disease than did the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), researchers have reported. The program showed a higher rate of lung cancer compared to the NLST’s, at 3.4% versus 2.4%. It also found more stage IV disease, wrote a team led by Kyle Lafata, PhD. The results were published April 23 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. “As LCS uptake increases, monitoring and tracking screening outcomes in clinical practice settings is key to high-quality ..read more