The third panel discussion at Radiology & Imaging Conclave 2021 was ‘New Frontiers in Radiology and Imaging’. The panelists analysed and discussed about future aspects and upcoming advancements in radiology.
The esteemed panelists for this discussion were Dr Vidur Mahajan, Associate Director, Mahajan Imaging & Head (R&D), CARING (Moderator); Dr Arjun Arunachalam, Founder & CEO, Voxelgrids Innovations; Dr Arjun Kalyanpur, Chief Radiologist & CEO, Teleradiology Solutions and Dr Namita Sinha Verma, Head, Global Teleradiology, Aster Medical Imaging, Aster DM Healthcare.
The moderator Dr Mahajan began the session by saying that, there are two kinds of AI that can be used in radiology, the ones that are administrative in nature and the clinical AI radiology solutions. Both can bring in better efficiencies, in business operations and the practice of radiology.
Dr Arunachalam talked about issue of accessibility of MRIs, mentioning that one way to solve this issue is by mobile portability, which allows staff to load the system and transfer it to the various parts. He also highlighted that devices and data would change, and deep learning would become very powerful in the times to come.
Dr Verma highlighted that understanding the physics and chemistry of the machines is as important as interpretation and understanding of the images. The best radiologist is one who understands the machine as well as clinical aspects. Therefore, she opined that radiologist of today have to delve into deep learning to prepare for an era of AI in radiology. “We need smarter MRI equipment which are intraoperative, easy to install, give newer sequences, provide better clinical details and take less time for transit between patients etc. to improve safety and outcomes,” said Dr Verma.
Dr Kalyanpur shared that teleradiology had come a long way in the last 20 years from fundamental value preposition that we scan in one place and transfer the image to other places. “I think it’s become an all enveloping part of teleradiology practice and it straddles many different benefits in value preposition. Today, teleradiology helps in better utilisation of workforce, provides good quality metrics and accelerates speed and accuracy of reporting.”
Highlighting that it was important for all the practices in teleradiology to focus on reducing the magnitude and frequency of error, Dr Kalyanpur said, “There are couple of things by which this can be done. One is by very stringent peer-reviewed process. The second way is to use the information collected from peer-review in training and feedback mechanisms throughout the organisations.”