Invention to Practice

摘要

The advance of medical imaging technology over the past 30 years has been extraordinary. Innovations such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and a host of image-guided inter-ventional procedures have made health care safer and improved outcomes. The continuous arrival of new imaging modalities is overwhelmingly the reason our specialty of radiology has flourished, both intellectually and financially. Most of us who use these technologies in our practices have come to accept the continued development of imaging as our due without much considering where these advances come from and the barriers they encounter on their way to the medical marketplace. I hope that the articles by Raab and Parr in this issue and the 2 succeeding ones will change that. In 3 excellent articles, the authors take us on a remarkable excursion into the Byzantine world of how new imaging technologies gain acceptance in the marketplace, including the roles of assessment, achieving appropriate coding, coverage decisions, and reimbursement. This is required reading for those of us who would better understand why some technologies end up being adopted by our practices while others fall by the wayside.