The Birmingham VA Medical Center serves a large primary care population of veterans from central Alabama with emphasis on common diseases, often at an advanced stage, and is also a regional referral center for veterans from Alabama and parts of Georgia and Florida requiring complex or subspecialty care. There are 8 full-time and several part-time radiology faculty including subspecialty-trained radiologists in Vascular and Interventional, Neuro-imaging, Breast imaging, Abdominal imaging, Cardiopulmonary, and Musculoskeletal imaging. 5-6 residents rotate at the VA at any given time in a “team practice” environment.
The Department of Radiology is a modern, completely digital department. In 2023 the BVAMC radiology department performed and interpreted lmost 100,,000 exams for almost 75,000 RVUs representing a mixture of routine imaging and very complex cases such as microwave ablations, chemo-embolizations, TIPS's, kyphoplasties, CT and MR angiograms, CT coronary angiography, CT colonography, Prostate, breast and cardiac MRI, and large numbers of biopsies and vascular interventions. Imaging volume and complexity have historically increased at about 4-5% per year.
The main Department of Radiology section is housed on the second floor adjacent to the Nuclear Medicine department and serves our veterans' general imaging needs with a Siemens all digital R&F room a Cannon Flat panel C-arm rad-fluoro room and third Flat panel RF room being installed in 2024. General radiology rooms in the main department and emergency room are GE digital radiographic units with tomosynthesis, image stitching, and dual energy capability. A fleet of all digital/DR portable radiography units serves the ER, OR, and critically ill inpatients.
The Birmingham VA operates a large multispecialty clinic in Huntsville with a full radiology department including General radiology, CT, Ultrasound, mammography, and MRI. A Birmingham Outpatient Clinic is located a few blocks from the main Hospital near red mountain expressway and houses new Hologic digital full-field mammography with tomography, biopsy and contrast mammography, as well as full service CT, Ultrasound and Radiography.
Equipment in the VA Imaging service is state of the art. CT services provided with Siemens Force dual-source CT scanner, and a brand-new Siemens Naeotom Alpha “Photon Counting” CT, first of its kind in a VA hospital. a GE HD 750 dual energy Gemstone 64 slice CT scanner with cardiac capabilities is housed at the Huntsville outpatient clinic and A Cannon 64 slice CT at the Birmingham outpatient clinic. New CT scanner being installed June 2024 in Anniston outpatient clinic. Two brand new in 2023 GE 1.5 T magnets with full cardiac and breast packages are located in MRI suite at the main hospital with a third brand new Siemens 1.5 T unit at the Huntsville clinic. The vascular and interventional area utilizes a Siemens Artis Ceiling Angio suite that was installed in 2020. A second minor procedure room houses a Cannon C-arm fixed system installed in 2023. Ultrasound is provided in four scanning rooms in the main hospital, two rooms in Huntsville and one room in the outpatient clinic, all with equipment updated in the past two years.
A new 64 slice Cannon all digital PET-CT is located in a dedicated PET area on the ground floor and jointly operated with the VA Nuclear Medicine department.
Multiple post processing systems are available for advanced image post processing and analysis, including Vitrea, Syngo-Via, Dynacad, RiverRain Clear Read CT with lung nodule analysis, Circle Cardiac analytics. A brand new Philips Vue-PACS with integrated voice dictation installed in 2023-24 finalizes modernization of image viewing and processing and fully supports remote reading.
For more information, please visit the Birmingham VA Medical Center.