News

UR Medicine’s Golisano Children’s Hospital this month became the first children’s hospital in the country to administer an integrated PET-MRI scan to a patient. The integrated PET-MRI scanner, which stands for positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging, combines two common imaging procedures into one, reducing radiation exposure to a minimum and allowing for a dual measurement of structure and metabolism.

UR Medicine leaders will today break ground on a new building that will house a state-of-the-art outpatient Imaging Center, as well as the region’s first stand-alone clinic to integrate care of autism with pediatric neuromedicine and child and adolescent psychiatry services.

The 90,000-square-foot, three-story building creates space to relocate outpatient imaging, interventional radiology clinics and autism/neuromedicine/behavioral health pediatric programs from the University of Rochester Medical Center campus to an easily accessible location along East River Road and the I-390 corridor.

Robert E. O'Mara, M.D., former chair of Radiology, as it was known then, and chief of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center, died April 26, at his home in Tucson, Ariz. He led ground-breaking research in bone scanning during his 25-year career at the Medical Center.

O'Mara attended University of Rochester, graduating in 1955, though he was very proud of being a part of the football team that went undefeated in 1952. He graduated from Albany College of Medicine in 1959. Following medical school, he served in the Air Force from 1960-63 during nuclear testing, which piqued his interest. He went on to residency training in surgery at Rochester General Hospital and radiology at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City, followed by a fellowship in nuclear medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.

After more than a decade of development and data-gathering -- including breast scans on nearly 700 women and 79 patents issued -- the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a breast-cancer imaging system invented by a University of Rochester Medical Center professor.

FDA approval of the breast scanner is the latest in a long line of URMC technologies that have been licensed and marketed, including cancer and pediatric vaccines.

The professor, Ruola Ning, Ph.D., is president and founder of Koning Corporation, a URMC startup company. The FDA’s action allows Koning to begin commercial distribution of its Koning Breast CT (KBCT) system. Koning’s medical device passed the FDA’s most stringent premarket approval process, which requires extensive clinical study.