GE Focuses on Cost, Speed and Quality at SNM 2011

Investing and innovating in ways that break through cost, quality and access barriers to health for individuals and entire health systems, GE Healthcare is highlighting an advanced portfolio of molecular imaging technologies at the 58th annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), June 4-8, in San Antonio.

“At GE Healthcare we are committed to developing products that increase access to life saving technologies, improve the quality of healthcare that patients receive, and do it in a cost effective way for our customers,” said Terri Bresenham, vice president and general manager Molecular Imaging, GE Healthcare. “Healthcare touches everyone. That’s why GE is committed to helping healthcare consumers and providers take on the world’s greatest healthcare challenges through healthymagination: the company’s six-year, $6 billion strategy to provide better health for more people at lower cost.”

Discovery* NM 630---fully upgradeable to SPECT/CT---addresses need for high quality technology that is more accessible
“More effective technology means more lives can be touched,” said Nathan Hermony, general manager, Nuclear Medicine, GE Healthcare.  “The new GE Healthcare system touches patient’s lives in many ways. For example, the system is designed to allow patient doses as low as 50 percent those of standard nuclear medicine scanning protocols, or the potential for patients to spend significantly less time on the table during exams, all without compromising image quality.”

The Discovery NM630 is engineered to help accommodate more patients than previous generation GE nuclear medicine systems. With its large 28” (70cm) wide bore and table capable of handling patients up to 500lbs. (227 kilograms), the Discovery NM630 provides access to a wide variety of patient sizes.

The more precise the information healthcare providers can get about a patient’s condition, the more effectively that patient can be treated. A step forward in detector design, the Elite NXT detector enables exceptional image quality. Elite NXT detectors are designed to offer outstanding SPECT resolution and exceptional contrast for superb image quality, all to help clinicians diagnose patients earlier and more accurately.  The Discovery NM630 is 510(k) pending at the FDA. It is not available for sale in the U.S.

Award winning Optima* PET/CT 560 provides performance, value and patient friendly experience
Recently receiving the ‘Price Performance Value’ Leadership Award in PET/CT for North America 2011 by global research firm, Frost & Sullivan, GE Healthcare’s Optima PET/CT 560 is an innovative scanner designed to address the demands of today’s healthcare environment. Combining superb image quality, high productivity and a patient friendly experience, the Optima PECT/CT 560 can continuously deliver ongoing value over time. The system offers efficiency and investment protection with the capability to grow with the future needs of the clinical practice. From the uninterrupted full head to toe exam to the remarkable dose reduction features, the Optima PET/CT 560 was designed to help physicians put patients’ needs first. It includes advanced VUE Point HD intelligent 3D iterative reconstruction technique to enhance resolution for uncompromised image quality that can help enable clinicians to confidently detect small lesions and increase quantitative accuracy.

ASiR now available on Discovery* NM/CT 670, Discovery* PET/CT 600 and Discovery* PET/CT 690
GE Healthcare is showcasing the advanced technique of Adaptive Statistical Iterative Reconstruction (ASiR†).  With this innovation now available across the Discovery PET/CT and Discovery NM/CT product lines, clinicians don’t have to compromise image quality while reducing dose to their patients.  With over 500 installations and 6 million patient scans, ASIR* is a proven CT technique to help decrease radiation dose.

Tri-Modality Imaging: PET/CT+MR
“In keeping with GE’s healthymagination initiative of reducing cost, increasing access to healthcare and improving quality, our approach to PET/CT+MR is to harness the power of two proven technologies to provide researchers the high quality clinical information they expect and are accustomed to receiving,” said Vivek Bhatt, general manager of the PET/CT business, GE Healthcare.

Based on mature, robust technologies, GE Healthcare is offering customers a PET/CT+MR imaging solution that’s both clinically and financially responsible.  This solution allows customers to use each system (PET/CT and MR) independently for clinical imaging while also providing the right technology to enable their advanced PET/CT+MR investigations. It helps researchers and clinicians make the most efficient use of their PET/CT and MR imaging systems, by allowing the use of these high-value assets independently for routine, standalone clinical exams in either modality. 

Gustav von Schulthess, MD, PhD, , Department of Medical Radiology, University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland has been using the GE PET/CT+MR solution to study the clinical value of PET/CT+MR.

Click here to see Dr. von Schulthess demonstrate GE Healthcare’s PET/CT+MR in action:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WFCtKx-rB0)

Radiopharmacy
FASTlab* Multi-Tracer Platform expands cassette based tracer production to FDG citrate formulation, FMISO, FLT and beyond
Expanding upon its Radiopharmacy platform, GE Healthcare is introducing new tracers to the FASTlab multi-tracer platform, an advanced PET chemistry system on which the company is also developing PET proprietary agents. FASTlab offers a number of significant enhancements to address the ever-evolving challenges of tracer production. With the addition of three new cassettes, FASTlab users can access and produce FDG phosphate formulation, NaF, FMISO (HPLC free), FLT (HPLC free) and FDG citrate formulation (equivalent to TRACERlab* MX standard formulation) on the same FASTlab platform.  To facilitate regulatory preparation work, DMF type V, describing the FASTlab platform, and DMF type II outlining tracer cassette and synthesis have been filed with the FDA. “Our customers tell us they need to produce PET tracers more efficiently and economically to either satisfy growing demand or to save on operating costs. Moreover, they need to meet the latest stringent regulatory standards and maintain them day after day, and they want the ability to think ahead with new PET tracers for molecular imaging applications,” said Francois Roche, general manager, PET Delivery, GE Healthcare.

FASTlab is an open-ended platform capable of accommodating new tracers, as they’re developed-eliminating the need to buy a dedicated synthesis module to process a different tracer. The innovative hardware and user interface allows for consecutive production of different tracers on the same module. Clinicians just need to swap the cassette and the system is ready for the next tracer. Cassettes are bar coded-when loaded into the system, the processor reads the barcode and automatically downloads the right production parameters and batch information helping customers achieve CFR 212 cGMP compliance. FASTlab is also a key component of TRACERcenter*, one source and one complete solution for enabling compliant PET tracer production.