Purpose
To subjectively and quantitatively compare the quality of 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging of the prostate acquired with a novel flexible surface coil (FSC) and with a conventional ...endorectal coil (ERC).
Methods
Six radiologists independently reviewed 200 pairs of axial, high-resolution T2-weighted and diffusion-weighted image data sets, each containing one examination acquired with the FSC and one with the ERC, respectively. Readers selected their preferred examination from each pair and assessed every single examination using six quality criteria on 4-point scales. Signal-to-noise ratios were measured and compared.
Results
Two readers preferred FSC acquisition (36.5–45%) over ERC acquisition (13.5–15%) for both sequences combined, and four readers preferred ERC acquisition (41–46%). Analysis of pooled responses for both sequences from all readers shows no significant preference for FSC or ERC. Analysis of the individual sequences revealed a pooled preference for the FSC in T2WI (38.7% vs 17.8%) and for the ERC in DWI (50.9% vs 19.6%). Patients’ weight was the only weak predictor of a preference for the ERC acquisition (
p
= 0.04). SNR and CNR were significantly higher in the ERC acquisitions (
p
<0.001) except CNR differentiating tumor lesions from benign prostate (
p
=0.1).
Conclusion
Although readers have strong individual preferences, comparable subjective image quality can be obtained for prostate MRI with an ERC and the novel FSC. ERC imaging might be particularly valuable for sequences with inherently lower SNR as DWI and larger patients whereas the FSC is generally preferred in T2WI. FSC imaging generates a lower SNR than with an ERC.
Paid family and medical leave policies are increasingly popular in today's competitive labor market and provide well-documented advantages to all stakeholders. Implementing paid leave for ...radiologists can seem daunting due to overlapping legal and institutional policies, logistical challenges and call coverage, as well as industry-specific special considerations such as resident education and historical workplace attitudes. This toolkit can empower radiology leaders to implement written paid leave policies in their home institutions and demonstrate that equitable, compassionate institutional policies for paid leave are financially favorable, widely desirable, and increasingly achievable with the right tools in hand.
•Paid family and medical leave policies are increasingly popular in today’s competitive labor market.•Enacting an effective paid leave policy requires careful consideration of funding, logistics, and a practice's own needs.•This toolkit can serve as a framework for a paid leave policy that promotes a more diverse, inclusive, and healthy workplace.
Since 2017, Clinical Imaging and the American Association for Women Radiologists (AAWR) have celebrated the International Day of Radiology by recognizing the life and achievements of outstanding ...women in the history of radiology, previously featuring Marie Curie (2017), Lucy Frank Squire (2018) and Alice Ettinger (2019).1–3 In the past year, this has expanded to develop a collection of articles highlighting the lives and achievements of female ACR Gold Medal winners, as Curie and Ettinger were a part of this small cohort. ...she took two semesters of scientific photography during college. ...when Jackson narrowed down her choices for possible specialties to pathology and radiology, her own father encouraged her to choose radiology as a growing field with a promising future. ...Dr. Jackson has attended every RSNA annual meeting since her third year of residency.4 Dr. Jackson began volunteering with the ACR quite early in her career.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) passed a historic paid family/medical leave (PFML) resolution at its April 2022 meeting, resolving that "diagnostic radiology, interventional radiology, ...radiation oncology, medical physics, and nuclear medicine practices, departments and training programs strive to provide 12 weeks of paid family/medical leave in a 12-month period for its attending physicians, medical physicists, and members in training as needed." The purpose of this article is to share this policy beyond radiology so that it may serve as a call to action for other medical specialties. Such a PFML policy (1) supports physician well-being, which in turn supports patient care; (2) is widely needed across American medical specialties; and (3) should not take nearly a decade to achieve, as it did in radiology, especially given increasing physician burnout and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Supported by information on the step-by-step approach used to achieve radiology-specific leave policies and considering current and normative policies at the national level, this article concludes by reviewing specific strategies that could be applied toward achieving a 12-week PFML policy for all medical specialties.
CT-based body composition (BC) measurements have historically been too resource intensive to analyze for widespread use and have lacked robust comparison with traditional weight metrics for ...predicting cardiovascular risk.
The aim of this study was to determine whether BC measurements obtained from routine CT scans by use of a fully automated deep learning algorithm could predict subsequent cardiovascular events independently from weight, BMI, and additional cardiovascular risk factors.
This retrospective study included 9752 outpatients (5519 women and 4233 men; mean age, 53.2 years; 890 patients self-reported their race as Black and 8862 self-reported their race as White) who underwent routine abdominal CT at a single health system from January 2012 through December 2012 and who were given no major cardiovascular or oncologic diagnosis within 3 months of undergoing CT. Using publicly available code, fully automated deep learning BC analysis was performed at the L3 vertebral body level to determine three BC areas (skeletal muscle area SMA, visceral fat area VFA, and subcutaneous fat area SFA). Age-, sex-, and race-normalized reference curves were used to generate
scores for the three BC areas. Subsequent myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke was determined from the electronic medical record. Multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine hazard ratios (HRs) for MI or stroke within 5 years after CT for the three BC area
scores, with adjustment for normalized weight, normalized BMI, and additional cardiovascular risk factors (smoking status, diabetes diagnosis, and systolic blood pressure).
In multivariable models, age-, race-, and sex-normalized VFA was associated with subsequent MI risk (HR of highest quartile compared with lowest quartile, 1.31 95% CI, 1.03-1.67,
= .04 for overall effect) and stroke risk (HR of highest compared with lowest quartile, 1.46 95% CI, 1.07-2.00,
= .04 for overall effect). In multivariable models, normalized SMA, SFA, weight, and BMI were not associated with subsequent MI or stroke risk.
VFA derived from fully automated and normalized analysis of abdominal CT examinations predicts subsequent MI or stroke in Black and White patients, independent of traditional weight metrics, and should be considered an adjunct to BMI in risk models.
Fully automated and normalized BC analysis of abdominal CT has promise to augment traditional cardiovascular risk prediction models.
While the lack of flexibility with the examination process is inconvenient for any resident planning a family, the negative impact is far greater on women because of the physical demands of ...parturition and lactation as well as the ongoing gendered societal expectations of mothers. While current representation of women on the ABR Board of Governors remains low (12%) 10, recent national efforts aimed at examining gender diversity within radiology and radiation oncology leadership is noteworthy. Dr. Jagsi has stock options as compensation for her advisory board role in Equity Quotient, a company that evaluates culture in health care companies; she has received personal fees from Amgen and Vizient and grants for unrelated work from the National Institutes of Health, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, the Komen Foundation, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan for the Michigan Radiation Oncology Quality Consortium.
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