No, that’s not usually how we finish that statement about spring months here, north of the equator, but it is fitting for this springtime issue of The RADIANT, what with the second half of the article on intraoperative imaging from colleagues Scott Branton and Tobias Gilk.
And speaking of Scott, I hope you get a chance to hear him speak at the AHRA Spring Meeting in Seattle in April (look for the link in the left column). Scott will be sharing some of the evidence-based design strategies we’ve developed for improving the energy efficiency of your imaging facilities without compromising operational efficiency or future flexibility.
And while we would love to see you at one of our presentations, we’re also actively working to make ourselves more accessible to you when you have questions about planning or architecture for radiology facilities. RAD-Planning has now established a presence both on Twitter and on Facebook. This means that (besides this newsletter), you will always find us no further from you than your computer, for answers to your questions and information about our upcoming presentations. To get ‘plugged in’ to this information, we ask that you follow our Twitter account and like our Facebook page.
And lastly, thanks to many days of work by Liz in our office, I’m pleased to let you know that all prior articles from The RADIANT and our earlier publication, the MRI Newsletter, have been copied to the RADblog and are available for free!
In the meantime, please enjoy this month’s features, including pieces on MRIs and fire safety, design considerations for linear accelerator vault upgrades, new radiology safety requirements, and a feature on a project for which we designed an imaging suite when we didn’t even know what was going to be sited there. We hope you get something valuable from each one!
To some, intraoperative imaging represents a springboard from which surgery will launch itself into a new technological age. To others, the capacity to provide high-level imaging concurrent with surgical interventions is an expensive solution in search of a problem. The range of new products and clinical offerings, however, suggest that this approach to interventional medicine is here to stay…
By virtue of the fact that hospitals, by definition, are meant to be filled with the sick, the frail, and the disabled, a fire in a hospital presents a more serious threat than to just about any other building type. It is for that reason that life safety measures are more strictly regulated, checked, and re-checked, in hospitals than in nearly any other type of building. The result is that fires in hospitals are rare… but yet they do occur.
When a linear accelerator is replaced or modified, the shielding for the room needs to be reviewed, and likely modified. And unlike X-ray, CT, or most nuclear medicine suites, we’re not talking about millimeters of lead foil, for linac vaults we’re often talking about feet of high-density shield materials!
♫ “I wish they all could be SEC. 3. Section 115113 of the California State Health and Safety Code…” ♫
Well, you might just get your wish!
After a couple of high-profile medical radiation overdose cases in California, compounded by the public attention from the series of articles by the New York Times’ Walt Bogdanich, the State of California became the first in the nation to cap dose, and mandate error reporting for inappropriate exam administration. And the California test-kitchen may produce the recipe that the broader industry will follow...
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our clients must sometimes think we’re crazy (or have the short-term memory of a pigeon), because often we lay out diametrically opposed objectives for their project. One such project is an MRI suite for the VA Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas...
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To some, intraoperative imaging represents a springboard from which surgery will launch itself into a new technological age. To others, the capacity to provide high-level imaging concurrent with surgical interventions is an expensive solution in search of a problem. The range of new products and clinical offerings, however, suggest that this approach to interventional medicine is here to stay…
By virtue of the fact that hospitals, by definition, are meant to be filled with the sick, the frail, and the disabled, a fire in a hospital presents a more serious threat than to just about any other building type. It is for that reason that life safety measures are more strictly regulated, checked, and re-checked, in hospitals than in nearly any other type of building. The result is that fires in hospitals are rare… but yet they do occur.
When a linear accelerator is replaced or modified, the shielding for the room needs to be reviewed, and likely modified. And unlike X-ray, CT, or most nuclear medicine suites, we’re not talking about millimeters of lead foil, for linac vaults we’re often talking about feet of high-density shield materials!
♫ “I wish they all could be SEC. 3. Section 115113 of the California State Health and Safety Code…” ♫
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." – F. Scott Fitzgerald