Medicsight Inc., a subsidiary Medicsight KK, announced this week plans to initiate eight Japan clinical studies jointly sponsored by the Japan National Cancer Center. The studies will be under the leadership of Professor N. Moriyama, director of the Cancer Screening Technology Division, National Cancer Center. Another goal of the studies is to determine uses for Medisight's ColonCAD and LungCAD software for Japanese patients.

"Medicsight is committed to ensuring our software is compatible with Japanese populations and is easy for Japanese radiologists to utilize," said David Sumner, CEO, Medicsight Asia. "This series of trials will concentrate on showing how CAD can benefit radiologists in interpreting time-consuming and difficult-to-read studies such as CT colonography and identifying lesions in the lung, such as nodules. It is the first time that such a series has taken place in Japan and we believe that it will further drive the adoption of CAD as being essential when reading these types of study," added Sumner.

Medicsight's CAD tools are designed to be seamlessly integrated into either 3D workstations or PACS and assist radiologists in the identification of potentially fatal lesions found in the lung and polyps found in the colon. By utilizing a 'concurrent-read' approach, Medicsight CAD allows radiologists to review the original images simultaneously with regions of interest generated by CAD.

The products are: ColonCAD, an image-analysis software tool designed to be used with CT virtual colonoscopy; and LungCAD, a medical imaging software tool designed to assist radiologists in the evaluation of pulmonary nodules on a CT scan of the lung.