Radiology and imaging

Alzheimer’s treatment works best early, so why are patients waiting? [PODCAST]

November 7, 2026Nov 7, 2026

Two Alzheimer's drugs now slow the disease, and they work best when symptoms are still mild. Emer MacSweeney is a neuroradiologist and the cofounder and CEO of Re:Cognition Health. This episode is based on her article "Early Alzheimer's detection is…

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Two Alzheimer’s drugs now slow the disease, and they work best when symptoms are still mild. Emer MacSweeney is a neuroradiologist and the cofounder and CEO of Re:Cognition Health. This episode is based on her article “Early Alzheimer’s detection is now a treatment decision,” published on KevinMD. She explains …

Health technology

AI in radiology: A missing flag is not a negative read

Harvey Castro, MD, MBA

October 29, 2026Oct 29, 2026

Picture a busy ED at 1 a.m. A CT pulmonary angiogram comes back from the scanner. The worklist shows no AI flag for pulmonary embolism. The radiologist has 30 studies in the queue. The patient's heart rate is still 112.…

What does the missing flag mean? A new study says: less than most of us assume.

On Oct. 21, researchers at Emory published a look at two FDA-cleared PE detection algorithms …

Medical education

Patient anxiety during MRI should change what we order

Riya Sood

October 18, 2026Oct 18, 2026

My rushed morning started in the injection bay, where the radiology technician was getting ready to start an IV line to inject a contrast agent called gadolinium into the patient's vein. As a third-year medical student, I was curious to…

My rushed morning started in the injection bay, where the radiology technician was getting ready to start an IV line to inject a contrast agent called gadolinium into the patient’s vein. As a third-year medical student, I was curious to finally see a part of patient care that often happens out of my view when working with physicians: imaging. I often saw physicians order imaging studies, read the radiologist reports, …

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Why the physics of a PET scan depends on antimatter

Jack Tiller

October 16, 2026Oct 16, 2026

Most people, including plenty of us still in medical training, know the basics of a PET scan on the surface. PET stands for positron emission tomography; patients get injected with a radioactive glucose tracer called fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), and areas of high metabolic activity light up on the scan. What gets left unsaid is everything underneath it: what a positron actually is, why it exists at all, and how the answer …

Michael Brant-Zawadzki, MD

The radiologist shortage behind your scan delays

August 14, 2026Aug 14, 2026

Waiting seven days or more to get a report of your recent CT scan? Welcome to today's new normal. Until a couple of years ago, the digital transformation of radiology dramatically shortened turnaround times of report delivery. The last-century process…

Waiting seven days or more to get a report of your recent CT scan? Welcome to today’s new normal. Until a couple of years ago, the digital transformation of radiology dramatically shortened turnaround times of report delivery. The last-century process of audio dictation, manual transcription, editing, and signing final reports was replaced by direct voice recognition software. Radiologists became the transcribers and editors. Turnaround of reports from study time shortened …

Lead apron management is a logistics problem ignored

Adwait Chafale

July 16, 2026Jul 16, 2026

Every day, thousands of health care workers put on lead aprons before stepping into imaging suites, fluoroscopy rooms, and interventional radiology labs. These garments, unglamorous, heavy, and easy to overlook, are the last line of defense between clinical staff and the cumulative effects of ionizing radiation. According to the World Health Organization, repeated exposure to radiation can lead to skin and blood damage, cataracts, infertility, congenital disabilities, and …

Health technology

Is AI replacing radiologists? A radiologist disagrees.

Pouyan Golshani, MD

June 27, 2026Jun 27, 2026

A third-year medical student told me last month she was not going to apply to radiology. She had been interested all through second year, had done a sub-internship she liked, and had the grades to match anywhere. Then she changed her mind. The reason, almost verbatim: “My advisor said I should not go into a field that AI is going to replace.”

She is not the only one. I have heard …

Early Alzheimer’s detection is now a treatment decision

Dr. Emer MacSweeney

June 10, 2026Jun 10, 2026

For decades, an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis has been viewed as simply a confirmation of a disease, not an opportunity for treatment. Typically, patients or family members would notice subtle changes in memory. Once these symptoms reached the point where concern…

For decades, an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis has been viewed as simply a confirmation of a disease, not an opportunity for treatment. Typically, patients or family members would notice subtle changes in memory. Once these symptoms reached the point where concern was raised to a physician, and referrals were made, often leading to months of waiting to see a neurologist, opportunities for even symptomatic treatment were significantly smaller. This diagnosis-to-treatment gap …

Point-of-care ultrasound transforms emergency medicine

Joshua Guttman, MD

May 13, 2026May 13, 2026

Emergency medicine is exciting, at least, that is the story we tell. It is so exciting that there are entire television (TV) shows built around it. Resuscitations, critical illness. And medical mysteries we get the first crack at solving. That is what draws people in. It is what drew me in. But the truth is, real emergency medicine does not look like television. After medical school and residency, after the …

Dr. Amarachi Amanda Dukor

Artificial intelligence in radiology and global health equity

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

In global conversations about the future of radiology, artificial intelligence (AI) is often positioned as the solution to the field's most pressing challenges. From improving diagnostic accuracy to reducing physician workload, the possibilities seem extensive. Yet, as a medical student…

In global conversations about the future of radiology, artificial intelligence (AI) is often positioned as the solution to the field’s most pressing challenges. From improving diagnostic accuracy to reducing physician workload, the possibilities seem extensive. Yet, as a medical student training in Nigeria, I have come to realize that the conversation around sustainability in radiology must begin much earlier, specifically at the point of access. In my training, I have …

Francisco M. Torres, MD & Purab Patel

Why MRI classification systems improve spinal stenosis care

March 27, 2026Mar 27, 2026

The saying, "treat the patient, not the X-ray," captures a core challenge we face in spine practice: Clinical symptoms and imaging findings often do not align, making it crucial to approach imaging with a structured framework. This lesson was evident…

The saying, “treat the patient, not the X-ray,” captures a core challenge we face in spine practice: Clinical symptoms and imaging findings often do not align, making it crucial to approach imaging with a structured framework. This lesson was evident when we treated two patients with strikingly different presentations. The first was a 35-year-old woman whose MRI report identified severe scoliosis and spinal stenosis. Yet, she was totally asymptomatic, with …

Whole-body MRI screening: a radiologist’s guide to preventive scans

Amit Newatia, MD

March 23, 2026Mar 23, 2026

Last year, a 45-year-old woman walked into my screening center in Laurel, MD. She was fit, healthy, and had no symptoms whatsoever. She just wanted peace of mind, the kind of baseline health data that her annual physical could not provide. Ninety minutes later, her whole-body MRI revealed a kidney tumor she did not know existed. No pain. No blood in her urine. Nothing to suggest she was …

Medical education

The hidden curriculum: What medical school does not teach you

Vance Lehman, MD

March 16, 2026Mar 16, 2026

In medical school, we only learn a fraction of what we need to know to succeed as doctors. The rest, we learn serendipitously through role modeling, trial and error, and other venues. Without luck, however, we may not learn these factors at all. It turns out that unspoken forces, the so-called “hidden curriculum,” may have a greater impact on our personal and professional outcomes than most people realize. As educators …

Vladislav Tchatalbachev, MD

Navigating the patchwork of CME requirements by state

March 11, 2026Mar 11, 2026

I hold medical licenses in multiple states. As a teleradiologist, I have to; it is the nature of the work. What I did not fully anticipate was how much time I would spend navigating the patchwork of continuing medical education…

The variation in numbers

In Montana, the state requires exactly zero hours of CME for license renewal. Drive across the border to Washington, …

Michael Brant-Zawadzki, MD

Whole-body MRI screening: political privilege or future of care?

January 6, 2026Jan 6, 2026

The use of MRI body scanning as a preventative tool was highlighted by the president's recent rope-a-dope with the media. Community practice whole-body MRI businesses now exist, local entrepreneurs directly marketing these services to the public. These scans are not…

The use of MRI body scanning as a preventative tool was highlighted by the president’s recent rope-a-dope with the media. Community practice whole-body MRI businesses now exist, local entrepreneurs directly marketing these services to the public. These scans are not reimbursable by traditional health payers.

The attraction of MRI is its lack of ionizing radiation, as well as its proven sensitivity to a variety of pathologies. Example: Detection of breast …

Health technology

AI in medical imaging: When algorithms block the view

Gerald Kuo

November 18, 2025Nov 18, 2025

He spent his youth memorizing lungs. That was how he learned chest X-rays, not by chasing abnormalities, but by studying thousands of perfectly normal films until his eyes could sense when something was ever so slightly wrong. "If you don't…

He was a chest physician, not a radiologist, yet his skill with chest imaging became legendary. At Taipei Veterans General Hospital, …

When a good radiologist is accused of fraud

Daniel Cousin, MD

October 29, 2025Oct 29, 2025

In December 2017, a fellowship-trained neuroradiologist in good standing was pulled off his teleradiology shift mid-interpretation by the police, put in handcuffs, and taken to jail. He was accused of reading ultrasound studies too quickly, approximately three to five minutes per interpretation, inconceivable to the district attorney and their hired plaintiff radiologist expert. Because there were Medicaid patients involved, he was said to be defrauding the government. The allegation was …

The timeless art of diagnostic reasoning

Sandip Pandey

October 11, 2025Oct 11, 2025

The patient was in her forties. She experienced chest pain, but it did not appear to be "classic." Her ECG was normal. Her labs did not raise alarms. The team leaned toward anxiety. Hours later, she went into cardiac arrest…

The patient was in her forties. She experienced chest pain, but it did not appear to be “classic.” Her ECG was normal. Her labs did not raise alarms. The team leaned toward anxiety. Hours later, she went into cardiac arrest from a heart attack. That silence after the code still stays with me. We anchored on the first test. We closed the case too early. We stopped listening to her …

Limiting beliefs are holding your career back

Sanj Katyal, MD

August 15, 2025Aug 15, 2025

As physicians, we are highly motivated, educated, hardworking and compassionate individuals. We deserve the best that life can offer. I do not mean the nicest houses or fanciest cars (although there is nothing wrong with luxuries). What I am referring to is having the type of career that brings out the best in us. A work environment that allows us to share our gifts easily and effortlessly ultimately contributing to …

Why point-of-care ultrasound belongs in every emergency department triage [PODCAST]