Siemens demonstrates intracardiac volume catheter

Siemens demonstrates intracardiac volume catheter

Siemens unveiled this week an ultrasound catheter that delivers real-time 3D images from inside the heart. The company is framing the new product as the world's first volume intracardiac echocardiography (VICE) catheter. Shown May 13 to 16 at the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in Boston, the Acuson AcuNav V promises to improve therapeutic ablation procedures and other electrophysiology applications. The VICE catheter is the latest such device in the AcuNav family, which entered the market 10 years ago.

ACR Image Metrix plans to support PET/CT Bone trial

Researchers in a multicenter trial comparing the effectiveness of PET/CT and conventional nuclear medicine to detect cancer metastases in the bone will depend on a data and image storage infrastructure developed by the American College of Radiology Image Metrix. Siemens and the Academy of Molecular Imaging are sponsoring the trial, which will compare results from planar technetium-99m MDP (methylene diphosphonate) bone imaging with fluorine-18 sodium fluoride PET/CT (F-18 NaF) in the detection of bony metastases from breast, prostate, and non-small cell lung cancers. Final results will be tallied on 500 patients studied at 13 sites in the U.S. using a protocol developed with the FDA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The first subjects of this patient population have been enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare Systems, and Scottsdale Medical Imaging. More than two million planar Tc-99m MDP scans are done each year to determine whether cancer has spread to the bone. F-18 NaF PET/CT bone scanning may have advantages, as it can find smaller metastases and differentiate more accurately between cancerous and noncancerous lesions.