A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Manhattan Diagnostic Radiology (MDR; New York) reported that it will be the first imaging facility in Manhattan to offer Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) in the fight against breast cancer. This installation will provide Manhattan Diagnostic Radiology an increased ability to image and diagnose early-stage breast cancers, positively impacting cancer management. The technology provides unprecedented metabolic resolution down to 1.5 millimeters.

The PEM Flex scanner from Naviscan (San Diego) uses PET technology to produce high-resolution tomographic images of 1.5 millimeters resolution, allowing physicians to visualize breast tumors about the size of a grain of rice. The scanner is the size of a mammography unit and consists of two high-resolution detector heads which are placed in close proximity to the breast. Compared to the higher-force compression necessary for mammography, the PEM Flex scanner uses gentle breast immobilization.

In other agreements/contracts, Private Access (Aliso Viejo, California) and Genetic Alliance (Cambridge, Massachusetts), reported forming a public-private partnership designed to simultaneously protect patients' privacy rights while creating a faster and more cost effective way for researchers to connect with patients in order to find causes and treatments for chronic illnesses and diseases. Leaders of both organizations believe that their combined efforts will help transform today's medical research environment, saving time and money, producing better outcomes, and in a manner that respects each individual patient's right to decide with whom they share their confidential health information.

Genetic Alliance says it brings together diverse stakeholders that create partnerships in advocacy; integrates individual, family, and community perspectives to improve health systems; and revolutionizes access to information to enable translation of research into services and individualized decision-making.

Private Access develops web-based applications intended to solve the privacy hurdle that the medical community faces when attempting to recruit subjects for clinical trials and to share confidential records in pursuit of faster diagnoses and better treatments for diseases and chronic illnesses.