SNM Puts Personalized Medicine Advances in Focus
At its 54th Annual Meeting from June 2-6, the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) is focusing on the latest advances in personalized medicine within the field. Some 4,000 attendees, including physicians, technologists, administrators, scientists and pharmacists are expected at the event in Washington, D.C.
“Molecular imaging — the use of state-of-the-art imaging technologies [such as PET, SPECT, MRI and others] to ‘photograph’ biological targets or pathways in the body — and its therapy value will be at the forefront of ‘personalized medicine,’ eventually providing patient-specific information that allows tailored treatment of disease,” said SNM President Martin P. Sandler.
The conference will include 100+ continuing education courses, and more than 180 representatives from the industry’s top product and service providers are participating in SNM’s exhibit hall. Here are some highlights of what you’ll see on the exhibit show floor.
More: www.snm.org/am
Capintec (Booth #1418) is showcasing its line of nuclear medicine and radiology shielding products, including the new CRC-25 Dose Calibrator line, and Cap-DICOM software for the Captus 3000 Thyroid Uptake System.
Codonics (Booth #1700) is highlighting its Horizon Multi-media Dry Imager and Virtua Medical Disc Publisher. Both products can stand alone, but together, Horizon and Virtua provide a comprehensive image documentation system. The compact Horizon Multi-media Dry Imager combines the ability to print diagnostic images onto several sizes of film, color paper and grayscale paper in any combination without operator intervention. The Codonics Virtua Medical Disc Publisher is a DICOM-compliant network appliance that can concurrently record and label multiple medical studies onto CD and DVD media. Virtua’s design includes an embedded processor, robotic disc handling and a touch screen interface.
GE Healthcare (Booth #1017) is introducing the PET VCAR (volume computer-assisted reading) oncology application that provides clinicians with a tumor response “report card” for improved patient management.
GE also is highlighting the Discovery VCT (64 slice) PET/CT system with SnapShot Pulse, an automated response to a patient’s heart rate that ensures that radiation is only on for portions of a scan. The system provides clinicians with both anatomical and physiological information when assessing coronary artery disease.
The Infinia Hawkeye SPECT system is being demonstrated to showcase improvements in coverage and acquisition time. Infinia Hawkeye 4 (4-slice) is designed to increase diagnostic confidence and efficiency for lesion localization and attenuation correction.
Also on display is the new PETtrace10 which provides high PET radioisotope production capability, and offers PET radiopharmaceutical users increased capacity and reliability for producing PET radioisotopes. GE also is showcasing FASTlab, a multi-tracer, cassette-based PET chemistry synthesis platform with an integrated cassette preloaded with pharmaceutical grade reagents for faster synthesis and higher yields.
MIMvista (Booth #1216) is extending its MIMviewer product line by providing immediate remote viewing of PET/CT archives. MIMviewer is now available in two new forms: MIMviewer Referring and MIMviewer Diagnostic. MIMviewer Referring gives physicians powerful PET/CT review capabilities in an intuitive lightweight viewer. MIMviewer Diagnostic additionally supports creation of referring CDs and incorporates more robust functionality. MIMviewer Referring and Diagnostic product lines will be available for demonstration.
Numa (Booth #817) is debuting NumaList Plus, a tool that provides enhanced integration and functionality for the Philips/ADAC Pegasys SPECT system. The new product eliminates time-consuming re-entry of patient information by importing HIS/RIS information directly into Pegasys systems. The user simply selects the scheduled patient at the acquisition workstation and acquires the images.
Also new at SNM is enhanced vendor compatibility for NumaRead, which enables translation of images from non-DICOM to DICOM format, and automated data migration. NumaRead is especially designed for moving PET, nuclear medicine, nuclear cardiology and related data stored on older, removable media to DVD or online storage
Complementing this is the new NumaStore Lite, a version of Numa’s image storage and management system tailored to the needs of smaller facilities.
Philips Medical Systems (Booth #838) is highlighting its PET/CT Pulmonary Toolkit that utilizes advanced respiratory monitoring technologies to improve the diagnostic accuracy of PET/CT scans and better integrate the diagnosis and treatment of oncology patients. Respiratory correlated imaging applied to PET data improves the accuracy of PET attenuation correction and SUV (Standard Uptake Value) calculations.
The company also is demonstrating its BrightView SPECT system, a compact nuclear gamma camera. The variable angle camera with Philips CloseUp technologies enables higher resolution through software, new electronics and minimal distance between detector and patient. The scanner is designed for various patient sizes and its open gantry provides a positive experience for patients without comprising system stability.
Siemens Medical Solutions (Booth #606) is exhibiting a new enhancement to its Biograph TruePoint PET/CT line of scanners. The Biograph 64 slice PET/CT can be utilized in cardiology, where combining CT angiography in selected patients with PET perfusion can help improve diagnostic accuracy and potentially reduce unnecessary coronary catheterization. Biograph also offers solutions in neurology that may aid in the earlier detection of diseases. Clinical applications, such as Scenium, enable automatic correlation of a patient study with an average brain for assessment of abnormalities.
Other areas of interest:
Sony Electronics (Booth #1653) is displaying its UP-D77MD model color dye-sublimation DICOM imager, with crisp 300-dpi letter size output. The 8 x 10-inch color printer is designed to support a full range of modalities, including PET/CT and other nuclear medicine modalities.
The UP-D77MD uses advanced dye-sublimation technology with robust color management. It is optimized to support accurate color reproduction and screen-to-print color matching without altering grayscale values.
Also being showcased is the dual-tray FilmStation dry film imager, which supports 8 x 10 inch, 10 x 12 inch and 11 x 14 inch film in a second media tray, along with native 14 x 17 inch film capability. The UP-DF550 model offers the same image quality, speed and compact footprint as the original FilmStation imager, with an expanded range of film sizes.
TeraRecon (Booth #615) is demonstrating its new AQPlaque suite of vascular analysis tools for its Aquarius product line. The toolkit enables researchers to investigate and evaluate a range of parameters from CT or MR images of vascular structures including coronary arteries, as a standard feature from standalone Aquarius Workstations or the AquariusNET thin-client software.
Parameters relating to plaque constitution and morphology, including the overall extent of wall remodeling, luminal encroachment and the density distribution of CT values within the plaque, can be characterized with the AQPlaque tools.
On the Aquarius Workstation, AQPlaque is integrated into the vascular analysis package and provides tools to delineate the vessel outer wall versus surrounding tissue and lumen. A set of HU (Hounsfield units) or intensity ranges can then be defined to visually delineate different structures, and volumes are reported for each delineated data range.
On AquariusNET thin-client software, the AQPlaque toolkit extends the analysis to production of a histogram of voxel values along the defined section of vessel.
Thinking Systems Corporation (Booth #440) is showcasing its ModalityBroker solution which was developed to allow customers to integrate all of their specialty modalities through ThinkingPACS and ThinkingRIS, or third-party enterprise-wide PACS. Thinking Systems’ portfolio includes a number or features, including a new plug-in for Philips iSite and integration with McKesson PACS.
“Molecular imaging — the use of state-of-the-art imaging technologies [such as PET, SPECT, MRI and others] to ‘photograph’ biological targets or pathways in the body — and its therapy value will be at the forefront of ‘personalized medicine,’ eventually providing patient-specific information that allows tailored treatment of disease,” said SNM President Martin P. Sandler.
The conference will include 100+ continuing education courses, and more than 180 representatives from the industry’s top product and service providers are participating in SNM’s exhibit hall. Here are some highlights of what you’ll see on the exhibit show floor.
More: www.snm.org/am
Capintec (Booth #1418) is showcasing its line of nuclear medicine and radiology shielding products, including the new CRC-25 Dose Calibrator line, and Cap-DICOM software for the Captus 3000 Thyroid Uptake System.
Codonics (Booth #1700) is highlighting its Horizon Multi-media Dry Imager and Virtua Medical Disc Publisher. Both products can stand alone, but together, Horizon and Virtua provide a comprehensive image documentation system. The compact Horizon Multi-media Dry Imager combines the ability to print diagnostic images onto several sizes of film, color paper and grayscale paper in any combination without operator intervention. The Codonics Virtua Medical Disc Publisher is a DICOM-compliant network appliance that can concurrently record and label multiple medical studies onto CD and DVD media. Virtua’s design includes an embedded processor, robotic disc handling and a touch screen interface.
GE Healthcare (Booth #1017) is introducing the PET VCAR (volume computer-assisted reading) oncology application that provides clinicians with a tumor response “report card” for improved patient management.GE also is highlighting the Discovery VCT (64 slice) PET/CT system with SnapShot Pulse, an automated response to a patient’s heart rate that ensures that radiation is only on for portions of a scan. The system provides clinicians with both anatomical and physiological information when assessing coronary artery disease.
The Infinia Hawkeye SPECT system is being demonstrated to showcase improvements in coverage and acquisition time. Infinia Hawkeye 4 (4-slice) is designed to increase diagnostic confidence and efficiency for lesion localization and attenuation correction.
Also on display is the new PETtrace10 which provides high PET radioisotope production capability, and offers PET radiopharmaceutical users increased capacity and reliability for producing PET radioisotopes. GE also is showcasing FASTlab, a multi-tracer, cassette-based PET chemistry synthesis platform with an integrated cassette preloaded with pharmaceutical grade reagents for faster synthesis and higher yields.
MIMvista (Booth #1216) is extending its MIMviewer product line by providing immediate remote viewing of PET/CT archives. MIMviewer is now available in two new forms: MIMviewer Referring and MIMviewer Diagnostic. MIMviewer Referring gives physicians powerful PET/CT review capabilities in an intuitive lightweight viewer. MIMviewer Diagnostic additionally supports creation of referring CDs and incorporates more robust functionality. MIMviewer Referring and Diagnostic product lines will be available for demonstration.Numa (Booth #817) is debuting NumaList Plus, a tool that provides enhanced integration and functionality for the Philips/ADAC Pegasys SPECT system. The new product eliminates time-consuming re-entry of patient information by importing HIS/RIS information directly into Pegasys systems. The user simply selects the scheduled patient at the acquisition workstation and acquires the images.
Also new at SNM is enhanced vendor compatibility for NumaRead, which enables translation of images from non-DICOM to DICOM format, and automated data migration. NumaRead is especially designed for moving PET, nuclear medicine, nuclear cardiology and related data stored on older, removable media to DVD or online storage
Complementing this is the new NumaStore Lite, a version of Numa’s image storage and management system tailored to the needs of smaller facilities.
Philips Medical Systems (Booth #838) is highlighting its PET/CT Pulmonary Toolkit that utilizes advanced respiratory monitoring technologies to improve the diagnostic accuracy of PET/CT scans and better integrate the diagnosis and treatment of oncology patients. Respiratory correlated imaging applied to PET data improves the accuracy of PET attenuation correction and SUV (Standard Uptake Value) calculations.The company also is demonstrating its BrightView SPECT system, a compact nuclear gamma camera. The variable angle camera with Philips CloseUp technologies enables higher resolution through software, new electronics and minimal distance between detector and patient. The scanner is designed for various patient sizes and its open gantry provides a positive experience for patients without comprising system stability.
Siemens Medical Solutions (Booth #606) is exhibiting a new enhancement to its Biograph TruePoint PET/CT line of scanners. The Biograph 64 slice PET/CT can be utilized in cardiology, where combining CT angiography in selected patients with PET perfusion can help improve diagnostic accuracy and potentially reduce unnecessary coronary catheterization. Biograph also offers solutions in neurology that may aid in the earlier detection of diseases. Clinical applications, such as Scenium, enable automatic correlation of a patient study with an average brain for assessment of abnormalities.
Other areas of interest:
- Siemens’ Symbia family of SPECT and SPECT/CT hybrid imagers for cardiology applications;
- Inveon, Siemens’ preclinical, multimodality imaging system, is a versatile and upgradeable platform and comprehensive suite of preclinical analysis applications. Inveon enables unified control of PET, SPECT and CT data; and
- Siemens is discussing its plans to further the clinical development and validation of novel imaging biomarkers for a range of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.
Sony Electronics (Booth #1653) is displaying its UP-D77MD model color dye-sublimation DICOM imager, with crisp 300-dpi letter size output. The 8 x 10-inch color printer is designed to support a full range of modalities, including PET/CT and other nuclear medicine modalities.
The UP-D77MD uses advanced dye-sublimation technology with robust color management. It is optimized to support accurate color reproduction and screen-to-print color matching without altering grayscale values.
Also being showcased is the dual-tray FilmStation dry film imager, which supports 8 x 10 inch, 10 x 12 inch and 11 x 14 inch film in a second media tray, along with native 14 x 17 inch film capability. The UP-DF550 model offers the same image quality, speed and compact footprint as the original FilmStation imager, with an expanded range of film sizes.
TeraRecon (Booth #615) is demonstrating its new AQPlaque suite of vascular analysis tools for its Aquarius product line. The toolkit enables researchers to investigate and evaluate a range of parameters from CT or MR images of vascular structures including coronary arteries, as a standard feature from standalone Aquarius Workstations or the AquariusNET thin-client software.
Parameters relating to plaque constitution and morphology, including the overall extent of wall remodeling, luminal encroachment and the density distribution of CT values within the plaque, can be characterized with the AQPlaque tools.
On the Aquarius Workstation, AQPlaque is integrated into the vascular analysis package and provides tools to delineate the vessel outer wall versus surrounding tissue and lumen. A set of HU (Hounsfield units) or intensity ranges can then be defined to visually delineate different structures, and volumes are reported for each delineated data range.
On AquariusNET thin-client software, the AQPlaque toolkit extends the analysis to production of a histogram of voxel values along the defined section of vessel.
Thinking Systems Corporation (Booth #440) is showcasing its ModalityBroker solution which was developed to allow customers to integrate all of their specialty modalities through ThinkingPACS and ThinkingRIS, or third-party enterprise-wide PACS. Thinking Systems’ portfolio includes a number or features, including a new plug-in for Philips iSite and integration with McKesson PACS.