SNM 06: Fusion imaging and workflow bring on the 'buzz'
The Society of Nuclear Medicine’s (SNM) annual meeting heads to sunny Southern California this month, gathering from June 3-7 in San Diego. If you’ll be onsite with the 3,900-plus expected professional attendees, you can take part in an assortment of education programs and stroll the exhibit hall filled with more than 190 manufacturers and providers of equipment, products, and services. Inside the exhibit hall, the buzz will focus on PET/CT and SPECT/CT systems, dedicated SPECT units, as well as image management and workflow optimization within the nuclear medicine department.
Here are some details on a variety of the products that will be on display in the exhibit hall. For more details on industry and product news during the meeting, visit us online at healthimaging.com.
Digirad Corp. (Booth #505) is featuring its Cardius-3 triple-head gamma camera targeted for nuclear cardiac imaging. The three-detector, solid-state design delivers high count statistics, with excellent sensitivity and image quality. With its modern and compact design, the Cardius-3 offers a true open gantry design, allowing it to fit in rooms as small as 8 x 7 feet. Utilizing optimized cardiac collimation, and a cardiocentric technique, the Cardius-3 features Digirad’s latest advances in nuclear cardiology.
GE Healthcare (Booth #714) is showcasing the DISCOVERY STE PET/CT scanner and its applications in imaging for cancer, heart disease, and neurological conditions to diagnose disease earlier and monitor a patient’s course of treatment. At the heart of the Discovery STE is the Discovery Dimension Console, fully integrated to optimize PET/CT workflow.
GE Healthcare also is highlighting the Discovery VCT 64-slice PET/CT system that combines the company’s LightSpeed VCT and Discovery PET systems.
The company also is focusing on recent advances:
- The Infinia Hawkeye nuclear medicine system provides users with improvements in coverage and acquisition time. Specifically, Infinia Hawkeye 4 (4-slice) is able to increase diagnostic confidence and efficiency for lesion localization and attenuation correction, GE said;
- Evolution for Bone – a recently introduced suite of reconstruction tools for GE’s Infinia with Xeleris functional imaging workstation provides clinicians with excellent image clarity and up to a 50 percent reduction in imaging time; and
- GE in collaboration with UltraSPECT is showcasing Xpress.cardiac, the new wide beam reconstruction (WBR) technology for faster nuclear cardiovascular imaging.
Finally, GE is featuring its high-capacity commercial cyclotron for PET radioisotope production. The new PETtrace10 provides customers with high PET radioisotope production capability, offering PET radiopharmaceutical users increased capacity and reliability for producing PET radioisotopes. And, GE’s FASTlab will be at SNM too, a multi-tracer cassette-based PET chemistry synthesis platform with an integrated cassette preloaded with pharmaceutical grade reagents resulting in faster synthesis and higher yields.
Hitachi Medical Systems America (Booth #204) is highlighting the SceptreC Cardiac PET system which is specifically configured to perform cardiac PET. The system allows the utilization of both Rubidium-82 for myocardial perfusion and 18-FDG for myocardial viability. The LSO-based system has been optimized with 3D Pico electronics to provide high-count rate capability and the Emory Cardiac PET Toolbox for cardiac quantification.
The SceptreC features fast acquisition times using a four-minute emission and two-minute transmission protocol that results in a high-quality myocardial perfusion study, the company said.
Numa Inc. (Booth #1236) is introducing two new products designed to enhance digital workflow in the nuclear medicine arena. The NumaServer enables ultra-fast, secure transfer of PET, SPECT and fusion data over any network or the internet. Also debuting is NumaRead that enables translation of images from non-DICOM to DICOM format, while automating storage migration from CD, MOD and DAT tape archive media to NumaStore online RAID, DVD or other long-term archive including PACS.
NumaServer fulfills an important need in nuclear medicine to facilitate image communication beyond the department and enterprise. It can be configured to pull images automatically from any DICOM source on a network and to push images to any DICOM destination. Files are encrypted and compressed to enable secure ultra-fast data transfer and are uncompressed and made fully viewable prior to storage and indexing in the database at their destination.
NumaRead is built to simplify the translation of older patient nuclear medicine data in non-DICOM format to DICOM, while streamlining migration of files maintained on older media to more sophisticated storage media or to NumaStore mini-PACS. The product works on a full range of media and is fully automated for maximum efficiency. It offers both an automatic mode for transfer of all stored data as well as a manual mode with query/retrieve for migration of select files.
Philips Medical Systems (Booth #1214) is showcasing its enhanced JETStream Workspace version 3.0 which offers new workflow and image display enhancements, new image analysis tools, as well as upgrades in clinical applications such as cardiac, bone, renal, salivary and brain. In addition, its IDL programming language allows customers to develop their own applications. All in all, JETStream Workspace is an integrated, personalized workflow management system designed to help clinicians operate with more speed, diagnose with greater accuracy, convey results to referring physicians faster and more conveniently, and run a practice more effectively.
Also on display is the company’s PET/CT system — GEMINI TF — that features time-of-flight PET imaging. Regardless of patient size, the system is designed to improve quality with low count-rate imaging, according to Philips.
Additionally, Philips is featuring the new PET/CT viewer application for the Extended Brilliance Workspace, which provides PET users with integrated image review and analysis environment for routine clinical evaluation of PET/CT examinations. The PET/CT viewer is adaptable to the workflow needs of individual users and substantially improves workflow and efficiency for routine clinical review.
Siemens Medical Solutions (Booth #318) is demonstrating its preclinical, multimodality imaging system — Inveon — that enables unified control of PET, SPECT, and CT data acquisition, and offers high PET resolution and sensitivity. Inveon features advanced multi-pinhole SPECT collimators for improved sensitivity and spatial resolution; new PET and SPECT acquisition and processing technology; and a PET transmission method for faster and more accurate attenuation correction. Available as a modular or integrated system, this imaging platform enables researchers to leverage any combination of Siemens’ preclinical hybrid imaging systems and leading-edge applications for improved research opportunities.
Siemens also is showcasing the Symbia S for SPECT-only which enables healthcare facilities an entry to the molecular imaging environment, with the option to upgrade to a range of attenuation correction, anatomical mapping, and CT options at a later date. The system’s high-definition Dynamic Digital Detectors (HD), Flash 3D technology, workflow automation feature, and user-friendly design allow for integration into a variety of clinical settings. Symbia S serves a broad range of applications, including general nuclear medicine, oncology, cardiology, and neurology studies that provide for a more accurate rapid diagnosis of disease states.
As for hybrid imaging systems, the company’s biograph family of PET/CT systems also are being highlighted. The systems provide considerable image quality with high-resolution CT angiography and myocardial perfusion in one registered exam. The Symbia TruePoint SPECT/CT system combines the functional sensitivity of SPECT with the anatomical detail of diagnostic multislice CT. With a single scanning session, this imaging technology quickly captures comprehensive, accurate information on both the molecular and anatomical levels, enabling clinicians to detect changes in molecular activity even before structural changes become visible.
Lastly, Siemens is highlighting its syngo TrueD, an advanced visualization tool that enables physicians to compare patient scans from two different points in time, such as pre- and post-therapy. The company’s Scenium advances neurological evaluation by enabling automatic correlation of the patient study with an average brain for assessment of abnormalities. Also, syngo CardioFusion is a unified platform for visualization of cardiac images from hybrid imaging technologies, which optimizes the cardiac clinical workflow to enable enhanced diagnostic capabilities.
Thinking Systems (Booth #1510) is introducing a range of enhancements to its web-based ThinkingPACS that provides specialized functionality in both nuclear medicine and PET.
New is a seamless integration with Emory Cardiac Toolbox, which provides comprehensive analysis of nuclear cardiology studies, from side-by-side rest and stress reconstruction to gated SPECT cine review. Also new are quantitative analysis packages for both cardiac and brain imaging. Complementing these are new reporting capabilities for cardiac stress nuclear medicine and echocardiography exams.
These new functionalities complement the company’s recently introduced support for dual-modality SPECT/CT scanners and dedicated image fusion software with a range of advanced features for both SPECT/CT and PET/CT. It builds on the company’s longtime support of a full range of imaging specialties, including such niche applications as nuclear medicine, orthopedics, x-ray angiography and echocardiography.