San Francisco, CA - January 21, 2005 - GE Healthcare today unveiled exclusive cardiac imaging techniques developed with the world’s first High Definition Magnetic Resonance (HDMR) system. The breakthrough cardiac applications were launched at the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) 8th Annual Scientific Sessions in San Francisco, California.

HDMR provides physicians with unprecedented image clarity of patients who are difficult to image due to movement, including Parkinson’s patients who suffer from uncontrollable patient motion and children who do not respond to sedation. In addition, HDMR is enabling physicians to consistently perform highly targeted studies of diabetic patients with lower blood flow to the lower legs.

“GE’s HDMR is an extremely fast data processing engine coupled with high density surface coils and extremely accurate gradients. The result is a unique balanced acquisition architecture, with individual receive channels connected to dedicated reconstruction engines. This allows us to develop entirely new applications available only with HDMR,” said Dennis Cooke, GE Healthcare’s Vice President, Global MR.

The “only-GE” cardiovascular imaging techniques introduced at SCMR include:

1.5T EXCITE HD MR Echo Cardiac Imaging: Real-time imaging of the heart with the resolution of MR at the speed of ultrasound, without the need for breath holding or ECG gating.

One in three cardiac patients cannot hold their breath long enough to make an image. Frequently, cardiac patients are too sick to hold their breath and have weak or arrhythmic heartbeats, resulting in special imaging challenges.

GE’s exclusive MR Echo produces high-definition cardiac images in real time of the sickest of patients, providing clinicians with the contrast detail of MR with the real-time speed and ease of use of echocardiography.

“It’s the ease of echo with the detail of MR,” said Steven D. Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Cardiovascular MRI & CT, Cardiovascular Research Foundation and Chief of Cardiovascular MRI, Lenox Hill Hospital. “Real-time image quality is robust even in patients with irregular cardiac rhythms who cannot breath-hold.”

EXCITE HD TRICKS Angiographic Imaging: A new 32-element peripheral 1.5T vascular coil, providing images of the lower leg and foot vessels with unprecedented definition.

More than half of diabetic patients have inadequate characterization of lower-leg vasculature. TRICKS (Time Resolved Imaging of Contrast KineticS), GE’s exclusive imaging technique, accelerates the temporal resolution of three-dimensional dynamic imaging. Clinicians can acquire 12 times the amount of data typically collected in a conventional MR angiography exam.

"The 32-element HD Peripheral Vascular Coil is easy to use and is comfortable for the patient. It provides full coverage from the knees to the toes, and has enough signal to make great MR angiograms," said Wolff.

ReportCARD: An innovative tool that significantly reduces review, analysis and cardiac MR reporting time.

“ReportCARD is an integrated tool for reviewing, analyzing, and reporting cardiac MRI studies. There is nothing else like it. I can't imagine doing cardiac MR without it,” said Wolff.

HDMR: Overcoming Current Technology Limitations

GE’s HDMR, available on GE Signa 1.5T and 3.0T MR systems, enables massively simultaneous imaging in multiple channels in increments of 16.

HDMR features unique balanced acquisition architecture, with individual receive channels connected to dedicated reconstruction engines.

As channels are added (in units of 16, 32, 48, 64 and more), image-processing power increases in proportion. The coil elements that detect the signal, the receivers that digitize it and the array processors that perform calculations are scaled together so that massively simultaneous imaging can be performed without image processing delays. This technology sets a new standard for acquisition, gradients and the human interface.

GE’s exclusive EXCITE technology has already enabled three exclusive, targeted MR applications with meaningful clinical benefits: VIBRANT for bilateral breast imaging in a single exam; TRICKS for MR angiography of the legs; and PROPELLER for high-quality brain imaging that is extremely resistant to motion artifacts. EXCITE HD brings each of these new applications info high definition.

"HD technology paves the way for an extremely wide range of targeted applications," said Cooke. "The possibilities are limited only by clinicians' imaginations. This new technology now allows physicians to image patients where it was previously impossible to consistently obtain diagnostic images. ”

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that will shape a new age of patient care. GE Healthcare’s expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceuticals is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and tailoring treatment for individual patients. GE Healthcare offers a broad range of services to improve productivity in healthcare and enable healthcare providers to better diagnose, treat and manage patients with conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular diseases.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) that is headquartered in the United Kingdom. Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 42,500 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at:

• www.gehealthcare.com