THE HAWKEYE IS fully integrated with the camera gantry and permits all the existing gamma camera acquisition modes. X-ray images can be obtained as part of a SPECT or CoDe acquisition protocol.

The X-ray measurements are acquired onto the Nuclear acquisition workstation. A correlated image review displays matching pairs of Nuclear and X-ray images and superimposes the uptake on the anatomical image.

For CoDe imaging, the Nuclear Detectors are fitted with Axial Shielding collimators in place of the multichannel collimators used for SPECT. The area of the patient to be scanned is first aligned with the Nuclear detectors while persistence image is acquired. The patient is then moved to the X-ray imaging plane where 40 half-scan slices are acquired at a tube power of 140kV 2.5mA with the detectors rotating can continuously at 2.8 rpm. The slice thickness is 10mm and the patient is moved 10mm between slices so 40 slices are acquired over a range of 400mm,corresponding to a similar area acquired in the CoDe acquisition. The X-ray acquisition takes around 10 minutes, after which the patient is moved under the NM detectors.
The regular NM procedure is then executed (e.g. for CoDe acquisition the detectors rotate continuously for 30 minutes at 1/3 rpm acquiring coincidence events over 10 revolutions). The photopeak to photopeak events are reconstructed using 2 iterations of the COSEM iterative reconstruction, which corrects for attenuation using the attenuation maps derived from the X-ray scans. The X-ray images are reconstructed onto a 128 matrix to match the scale of the COSEM reconstruction. Matching pairs of FDG and X-ray images are reviewed and a fused image is generated which overlays the FDG activity on the corresponding anatomical image.

QTR 2, 1999 Healthcare Asia THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT WIPRO GE MEDICAL SYSTEMS is a striking success story in the Indian medical equipment market. Unlike most new companies, Wipro GE has been profitable since its inception in 1990, with US$ 5M revenue and ranking 5 th in terms of market share. In less than a decade, it has become the diagnostic imaging equipment leader in India. Today, the joint venture between GE and Wipro accounts for about one-third of India’s US$ 200M market for imaging and related equipment. Wipro GE, GE Medical Systems X-Ray and GE BEL collectively form GE Medical Systems (GEMS) South Asia, although Wipro GE is the oldest and core firm.