TORONTO, CANADA - GE Healthcare introduced today a significant expansion to the company’s existing line of PET radiopharmacy equipment used by hospitals, research institutions and distribution pharmacies worldwide to produce radiotracers used in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.

GE’s new PETtrace10 will now offer PET radiopharmaceutical users increased capacity and reliability for producing PET radioisotopes. The announcement was made at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine held in Toronto, Canada.

“We developed the new PETtrace10 to further GE’s ongoing commitment to broaden the use of PET imaging applications, by providing the users with the highest capacity, multi-isotope capable cyclotron that will meet all their production and research demands today and tomorrow,” said Alexander Tokman, General Manager of Global Radiopharmacy and Molecular Imaging business at GE Healthcare . “Higher capacity can be translated into shorter production runs,” continued Tokman.

PETtrace10 is a dual particle, dual extraction cyclotron that can deliver 10Ci of 18F- in two hours. Its higher capacity and ability to produce most research isotopes is expected to broaden the use of PET and PET/CT technologies worldwide. PET & PET/CT procedures utilize fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) which when injected into a patient provides useful functional and anatomic information for oncological, neurological and cardiac evaluations.

“PETtrace10 will be an essential component not only for any commercial PET distribution operation but also for any high powered molecular imaging program because in addition to the high capacity, yield and reliability it provides the access to all widely used PET isotopes required for development of new, promising PET research tracers,” said Tokman.

GE Healthcare is the leading global cyclotron provider, with more than 150 installations worldwide. “In maintaining GE’s ongoing commitment to provide our customers with continuum products – PETtrace10 will be also available as a field upgrade to our PETtrace customers worldwide,” said Tokman.

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 biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is dedicated to detecting disease earlier and helping physicians tailor 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, neurological 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.