New GE e-Speed™ Scanner is Unveiled at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2002
Revolutionary New Electron Beam Tomography™ (EBT™) Scanner Offers Clinicians Cardiac CT Scans at the Same Frame Rate as a Cardiac Catheterization Lab
CHICAGO -- With more than 60 million Americans with heart disease and an estimated 3.4 million cardiac catheterization procedures performed each year, GE Medical Systems, a unit of the General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), today launched a new scanner that uses proprietary EBT technology to achieve the world’s fastest CT scanning. This technology breakthrough provides physicians with a new and reliable method to image the heart.
e-Speed™ can acquire 10 images during the time required to image a single frame using other scanners. Because of its unmatched speed, e-Speed can clearly depict coronary artery motion in a new volumetric cine or movie view of the heart – similar to cardiac catheterization.
Patients and their doctors appreciate the speed and comfort of the Comprehensive Cardiac™ exam, which provides images of the coronary arteries, cardiac function, and measures blood flow in the tissue of the heart in a 15-minute procedure.
e-Speed can acquire 33 millisecond (ms) images at 30 frames per second – a speed beyond the capability of any conventional CT imaging technology. Fast 33 ms cardiac imaging is important because it offers motion-free images of the heart.
Janet Burki, President & CEO of GE Imatron at GE Medical Systems, explained, “e-Speed’s 30 frames per second speed is impressive because this rate is the same as invasive cardiac catheterization - the gold-standard procedure for assessing the coronary arteries. With the introduction of e-Speed, doctors now have a non-invasive, high-speed tool for assessing their patients coronary arteries and cardiac function,” said Burki.
“The key to non-invasive imaging of the coronary arteries is temporal resolution,” said Daniel S. Berman, MD, Director of Cardiac Imaging at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “If a scanner requires a couple of hundred milliseconds to acquire the image, there will be motion artifacts at all but the lowest heart rates. Scanning at 33 ms, should nearly eliminate this effect, greatly increasing the frequency of diagnostic exams that will be useful in clinical decision making.”
Peter Arduini, General Manager, Global CT, at GE Medical Systems said, “GE will continue to lead the cardiac CT market through innovation and clinical excellence. e-Speed, along with LightSpeed16 and our extensive suite of cardiac applications, including CardIQ,™ gives clinicians a world of options for non-invasive cardiac diagnostic tools.”
About GE Medical Systems
GE Medical Systems is a $9 billion global leader in medical imaging, interventional procedures, healthcare services, and information technology. Its offerings include networking and productivity tools, clinical information systems, patient monitoring systems, surgery and vascular imaging, conventional and digital X-ray, computed tomography, electron beam tomography, magnetic resonance, ultrasound and bone mineral densitometry, positron emission tomography, nuclear medicine, and a comprehensive portfolio of clinical and business services. For more than 100 years, health care providers worldwide have relied on GE Medical Systems for high quality medical technology and productivity solutions. For more information, visit the GE Medical Systems Web site at www.gemedical.com
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