Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Is your PACS archive becoming the radiology equivalent of "Hoarders"? It doesn't have to be, if you purge digital images that are no longer necessary from your archive.
That's according to a group from Catholic health system Ascension Health, which at the RSNA 2013 meeting discussed its implementation of a rules-based system for deleting old images using information life-cycle management criteria.
Administrators at the health system found that after years of rapid growth in the size of archives throughout the system, they were able to arrest its expansion with the new approach, which runs on a daily basis to purge old images.
How old is too old? Find out by clicking here, or visit the PACS Digital Community at pacs.auntminnie.com.
Should patients be notified of CT radiation risk?
With concern mounting over the long-term effects of patient exposure to medical radiation, should radiologists be required to secure informed consent from patients before they receive a CT scan?
That's the weighty subject debated in our latest edition of Second Take, in which radiologists take opposing views on important topics in medical imaging.
The argument in favor of informed consent states that patients often have a poor understanding of the risks of medical radiation, and radiologists are the best healthcare professionals to educate them. The process of informed consent could even help radiologists develop a more prominent role in patient care. Read about this position by clicking here.
On the other side of the coin, the counterargument takes the position that the entire process of informed consent has devolved from a legitimate effort at patient education into what's basically one-sided rhetoric designed to give an (often ineffective) cover of legal protection to healthcare professionals.
What's more, the health risks of medical radiation aren't well understood, even by the most knowledgeable experts on the subject. How do we "inform" patients when we ourselves don't even have a full grasp of the effect of radiation? Read about this argument by clicking here.
![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)