Diagnostic Imaging Scan - November 27, 2007 - (Page 2) • Fonar (7753) features a new scoliosis application on the Upright scanner. • GE Healthcare (1729) further evolves the Signa HD x (highdefinition x) platform. • Hitachi Medical Systems America (1144) exhibits the recently released Oasis open. • Hologic (7113) displays an extremity scanner supplied by Esaote. • ONI Medical Systems (5104) promotes its 1T extremity scanner. • Paramed Medical Systems (7170) showcases its Ushaped open system. • Philips Medical Systems highlights last year’s Achieve XR, upgradeable in the field from 1.5T to 3T, along with other improvements to simplify exams. • Siemens Medical Solutions features its new smallfootprint 3T (Verio) and 1.5T (Essenza) bolstered by a new no-contrast MR technique. • Toshiba Medical Systems (7130) spotlights Vantage Titan, a wide-bore 1.5T, along with angiography techniques that don’t require contrast agents. Ultrasound is defined more by what it isn’t than what it is, as miniaturization takes hold. The advantages of being small will never outweigh the need for image quality. But good enough will be good enough for the specific purposes behind hand-carried units, leaving the most challenging studies to cart-based systems. • Aloka Ultrasound (6542) showcases the cart-based Alpha 10, the flagship in the ProSound series, as Alpha 7, cleared by the FDA in late August, awaits its turn. • Esaote (3339) leverages its MyLab portfolio to address demand for compact portables by upgrading its MyLab 30 to guide biopsies, assist in the placement of needles and catheters, and perform peripheral nerve blocks. • GE Healthcare (1729) capitalizes on the growing interest in hand-carried systems with its laptop-sized scanners while maintaining mainstream appeal with its cart-based ones. • Hitachi Medical Systems America (1144) demonstrates the HI Vision series of scanners, placing the 900 at the top. few technological innovations that slows rather than speeds patient throughput. AccuDetect has the potential to cut false positives by 60% to 80% below those typically encountered in mammography CAD, according to Yuri Prizemin, Parascript’s director of product marketing. Prizemin is careful, however, in choosing his words. “Parascript is not making any direct claims,” he said. “Instead we are saying that we ‘anticipate’ that existing false-positive rates can be reduced (by this much) with the use of AccuDetect algorithms.” Actual claims about its performance, according to Prizemin, must wait until AccuDetect is actually integrated with mammography systems. The company is grooming AccuDetect for sale to OEM customers. The software is compatible with both film-based and digital mammography exams, according to Prizemin. Underlying AccuDetect algorithms is a dozen years’ experience in software that digitizes and analyzes printed information for the U.S. Postal Service and corporations including Lockheed Martin, NCR, Siemens, and Unisys. “Medical imaging is a natural extension of our technology into areas that face significant challenges and require further technology advancements,” Prizemin said. “We believe the medical imaging breast cancer detection market is facing the challenge of high false-positive rates and are confident our proprietary image analysis technology can address these issues.” A differentiator between AccuDetect and other such software is the way its algorithms mark suspected lesions without obscuring the region of interest, he said. “Marking suspected lesions may often interfere with the region of interest or the area identified as suspect, prohibiting radiologists from analyzing the area more closely,” Prizemin said. “Each CAD application has a different way of dealing with this issue.” Parascript’s approach is to adjust settings so marked areas can be either de-emphasized or temporarily deleted. The unobtrusive markings enable more accurate interpretation of mammograms and increased detection of calcifications and masses. Adding to the power of AccuDetect is the ability of algorithms to learn. With increasing experience, the software learns to better utilize the programmed knowledge. After training is complete, the system can automatically locate and recognize similar but not necessarily identical lesions and cases. This training is an iterative process and includes testing and sometimes changing the system structure and its parameters. The software also makes use of “voting methods” to boost sensitivity and lower false-positive rates. Voting takes the output from two or more algorithms and compares the results. “Different algorithms can give multiple answers, such as confidence levels, types, locations, and dimensions of breast lesions, and these output results are used in voting,” Prizemin said. Whether their analyses will translate into substantially fewer false positives remains to be proven, but Parascript’s decision to enter this field underscores that there is at least room for improvement in the software now available. Corporate and academic R&D target stroke with ultrasound Microbubble therapies interest ImaRx and Philips, Oregon Health & Science Philips is working with contrast agent developer ImaRx to find information that might turn diagnostic ultrasound scanners into weapons against acute ischemic stroke, the companies announced early this month. Research at Oregon Health & Science University may complement Philips’ collaboration, providing information to use against a disease with annual medical costs approaching $63 billion. Every year three million in the U.S. suffer strokes. About 87% of these strokes are ischemic, according to the American Stroke Association, caused by blood clots that obstruct normal blood flow in the brain. Fewer than 6% of stroke victims receive tPA, the only drug approved by the FDA for acute ischemic stroke. Microbubble therapies promise a new means for delivering tPA or for busting up clots themselves. The collaboration between Philips and ImaRx will make use of Philips’ portfolio of scanners and engineers, fine-tuning parameters to produce the best therapeutic outcome possible with the SonoLysis approach from ImaRx. “We are trying to optimize the parameters in our equipment to use their proprietary technology and to develop treatment paraNovember 27, 2007 Copyright © 1991-2007 CMP Healthcare Media Group LLC
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