Toshiba trimmed its engineering and manufacturing staff at ToshibaAmerica MRI (TAMI) in South San Francisco by about 3% last month.The reduction was aimed at eliminating redundant functions resultingfrom the acquisition of Diasonics' magnetic resonance

Acuson lost a veteran marketing executive last month, promotedseveral top executives, and brought back a former manager whohad left the firm to head up Toshiba's U.S. ultrasound business. "We have made a number of changes in our organizationthat

Siemens will introduce a compact 1-tesla MRI scanner next weekat the Society for Magnetic Resonance Imaging meeting in Chicago.The vendor claims its new offering will fit in more places thanmost mid-field scanners. The space requirement for the

The court cases settled by GE Medical Systems and three independentservice organizations last month all involved GE's assertion ofcopyright protection for its advanced scanner service software.They were not, however, carbon copy agreements, as

Philips Medical Systems has installed the first magnetic resonanceangiography package for its 0.5-tesla Gyroscan T5 magnetic resonanceimaging system. The premier North American clinical test siteis New Britain General Hospital in New Britain, CT.The

Philips Medical Systems International has opened a regional headquartersfor Southeast Asia in Bangkok, Thailand. The existing PhilipsMedical organization in Thailand will be expanded to provide salesand customer support in the member countries of the

Medical Imaging Technologies (Meditech) has encountered delaysin its anticipated launch of fixed-site positron emission tomographyservices. The date has been pushed back from the first to thesecond quarter of this year. The formerly private company

Greenberg Radiology Institute of Highland Park, IL, installedthe first Siemens ECAT 953 positron emission tomography systemin the U.S. last year, according to executive director BenjaminF. Armbruster. The system was developed and produced by the

Imatron, a pioneer in ultrafast computed tomography scanning,signed on Siemens as a product development and marketing partnerthis month. The Siemens relationship involves future CT products and willnot impact Imatron's distribution contracts with

Siemens has made substantial changes in the design and layoutof its magnetic resonance imaging equipment over the past fewmonths. The vendor is suggesting changes in computer layout, consoledesign and radio-frequency shielding configurations for

Merge Technologies of Milwaukee has signed OEM agreements withPhilips and Toshiba for supply of its digital medical imaginginterface technology, according to Stuart C. Gardner, vice presidentof sales and marketing. Merge will customize interfaces for

Philips Medical Systems closed its North American dental imagingdivision in January, returning distribution rights and serviceresponsibilities for a panoramic x-ray unit to its manufacturer,Soredex of Helsinki. Soredex Medical Systems, the firm's U.S.

Cardiovascular Imaging Systems (CVIS) and Siemens Ultrasound haveentered into a joint product development/distribution relationshipin intraluminal ultrasound. Siemens showed the CVIS technologyon its SI 1200 high-end cardiology ultrasound system and SI

A federal district judge in Santa Ana, CA, has issued a preliminaryinjunction prohibiting General Electric from making, using orselling computed tomography bone mineral calibration phantoms.The phantoms are the subject of a patent infringement suit

Hostilities may be ceasing in the battle between GE Medical Systemsand the independent scanner service industry. Out-of-court settlementshave been reached in three cases, including a long-standing disputewith R Squared Scan Systems. Settlement of the R

Philips Medical Systems International apparently made a good impressionon visiting Chinese physicians during the 1990 Radiological Societyof North America conference. Authorities in the People's Republicof China ordered a second Philips T5 mid-field

Rediscovering an old idea and applying state-of-the-art technologyto it has enabled a Boston research team working with GE MedicalSystems to implement a novel pulse sequence that could changethe clinical practice of magnetic resonance imaging. The

Toshiba America Medical Systems has sharply focused its U.S. ultrasoundproduct efforts. The vendor has ended the sales of scanners intosuch markets as ob/gyn and urology--which were channeled throughdealers--in order to focus its own direct sales efforts

A Canadian picture archiving and communications systems developeris setting up a dealer network in the U.S. to sell its dedicatedultrasound sub-PACS product. Advanced Light Imaging Technologies(ALI) of Vancouver, British Columbia, has hired James

Advanced Imaging Systems has hired Medical Technology Enterprisesof San Diego to help guide its ultrasound holography system tomarket by year's end. AIS of Richland, WA, controls basic patentsin holographic ultrasound, a technology that has been under