Dear AuntMinnie Insider,
Like getting to Carnegie Hall, excellent virtual colonoscopy results take practice. Thankfully, a New York City team with seven years of experience is well placed to offer directions.
Dr. Michael Macari from the New York University Medical Center recently discussed virtual colonoscopy acquisition at the Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT in San Francisco.
His group began providing virtual colonoscopy services in 1997, with a single-slice CT scanner and without the literature and hands-on workshops practitioners have at their disposal today.
In today's Insider Exclusive story, Macari shares tips and techniques for acquiring high-quality diagnostic VC exams, including patient prep, acquisition, dose, and workflow issues. He discusses exposure protocols from single-slice machines to today's 16-slice scanners, which have improved resolution and accuracy while cutting acquisition times.
As an AuntMinnie Insider, you have access to this story before it is published for our other members. And thanks to the efforts of the NYU group and others, virtual colonoscopy today is nearly ready for its place in the limelight.
![Images show the pectoralis muscles of a healthy male individual who never smoked (age, 66 years; height, 178 cm; body mass index [BMI, calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared], 28.4; number of cigarette pack-years, 0; forced expiratory volume in 1 second [FEV1], 97.6% predicted; FEV1: forced vital capacity [FVC] ratio, 0.71; pectoralis muscle area [PMA], 59.4 cm2; pectoralis muscle volume [PMV], 764 cm3) and a male individual with a smoking history and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) (age, 66 years; height, 178 cm; BMI, 27.5; number of cigarette pack-years, 43.2, FEV1, 48% predicted; FEV1:FVC, 0.56; PMA, 35 cm2; PMV, 480.8 cm3) from the Canadian Cohort Obstructive Lung Disease (i.e., CanCOLD) study. The CT image is shown in the axial plane. The PMV is automatically extracted using the developed deep learning model and overlayed onto the lungs for visual clarity.](https://img.auntminnie.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/03/genkin.25LqljVF0y.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&crop=focalpoint&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
