Emerging issues in medical imaging.

Physicians are often faced with the dilemma of trying to do what is best for the patient, sometimes deciding to use a technological innovation. The profession has drawn up guidelines for common methods in imaging. These include informed consent, intravenous use of contrast media, ten-day rule, invasive procedures like angiograms (peripheral, cerebral, coronary, renal and so on), and image-guided biopsies. It is assumed that non-invasive techniques create little or no stress to the patient, and have no negative impact on radiologists’ ethical thresholds. But recent trends in these and other imaging procedures and techniques have raised new problems in practice. These include informed consent, the role of a specialist in the decision of brain death, difficult diagnostic decisions, policies regarding the use of contrast medial and coronary imaging, conflicting data on mammography screening and the expanding horizons of filmless radiology and telemedicine.