Where diagnostic confidence and efficiency intersect: GE HealthCare introduces Aurora, a new SPECT/CT with AI-powered capabilities at #EANM24

FOR EUROPEAN USE ONLY

• GE HealthCare proudly displays its latest solutions and discusses new collaborations at #EANM24
• A pioneer in digital nuclear medicine and industry leader in artificial intelligence (AI),[i] GE HealthCare is once innovating for the future with Aurora,[ii] a new SPECT/CT that harnesses the power of AI and advanced CT capabilities to help expand the range of procedures available for patients
• Combined with GE HealthCare’s well-established portfolio of Molecular Imaging solutions, these technologies and the Company’s recent collaborations aim to expand global access to precision care

HAMBURG, Germany — October 19, 2024 — At the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) 2024 Congress, GE HealthCare unveils Aurora,[ii] a new dual head SPECT/CT with AI-powered technologies. The system is designed to help clinicians see and do more, aiming to help expand the range of procedures available for cardiac patients and provide support for conditions such as cancer and neurological disorders – all of which rely on early detection and precise localization of abnormalities are key for effective intervention.

“GE HealthCare is proud to be a leader in the integration of machine learning and AI advancements for more than a decade,” shares Jean-Luc Procaccini, President & CEO, Molecular Imaging and Computed Tomography, GE HealthCare. “We've witnessed firsthand how these technologies can address some of the industry's toughest challenges, such as data overload, physician burnout, and the need for real-time operational efficiency. With this experience top of mind, we designed Aurora to harness AI for exceptional image quality as well as enhanced workflow efficiency. It would be difficult to find a dual head hybrid system with more AI-powered solutions than Aurora – and we have full confidence clinicians will appreciate the difference.”

As healthcare continues to shift toward precision medicine and personalized care, clinicians require more advanced SPECT/CT solutions. These nuclear medicine systems combine functional imaging from single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) with anatomical details from computed tomography (CT), offering clinicians a comprehensive view of both the physiological and structural aspects of diseases.

Aurora is designed to optimize both SPECT and CT technologies to capture gamma rays emitted by radioactive tracers. These findings are then turned into data which help create images showing the distribution of the tracer and enabling diagnoses across various care areas.

It also features GE HealthCare’s Revolution Ascend CT technology, offering additional design solutions to enable advanced capabilities that extend beyond routine imaging. This includes 40mm CT detector coverage – twice that of other hybrid systems[iii] – with a 75 cm-wide CT bore to help enhance patient comfort while facilitating high-speed scanning (0.35-second rotation speed)[iv] and offering up to 128 slices[v] for advanced procedures like coronary CT angiography.

To help customers more easily process the vast amounts of data produced, GE HealthCare designed Aurora to unlock the full potential of digital and AI, offering new opportunities to help clinicians solve operational and diagnostic challenges as well as develop personalized approaches for better patient outcomes. These enhancements include:

• Clarify DL[vi] deep learning image reconstruction, which is designed to enhance bone SPECT image quality performance, an important factor in increasing diagnostic confidence – in a clinical evaluation, Clarify DL's image resolution was rated as better in 98% of the exams;[vii]
• ASiR-V for lower dose (up to 82% relative to FBP), reduced noise levels up to 91% and improved spatial resolution at the same image noise;[viii]
• SnapShot Freeze 2 for improvement in motion blur reduction while maintaining high spatial resolution for whole heart motion correction;[ix]
• SwiftScan SPECT, which enables up to a 25% reduction in scan time or injected dose while maintaining lesion detectability;[x]
• Evolution, Aurora’s resolution recovery algorithm designed to overcome conventional imaging trade-offs by modelling the collimator/detector response – enables up to a 50% reduction in scan time or injected dose;[xi] and
• SmartMar for excellent artifact-less imaging, which enables a reduction photon starvation, beam hardening, and streak artifacts caused by metal in the body.

Finally, Aurora is equipped with Effortless Workflow, which offers a set of efficiency solutions – including Auto Prescription and Smart Plan – enhanced by digital automation and design innovations to help ease technologists' intervention and intervention and help make exams smooth and comfortable for patients.

“Aurora is the machine we were waiting for,” Bruno Vanderlinden, Radiation Physicist, Brussels University Hospital.[xii] “We can program the machine to run all the tests we do in nuclear medicine. It really is the Swiss army knife of imaging machines in nuclear medicine. We were able to set up acquisitions for 2-D, 3-D, and dynamic imaging, with high-quality CT scans and a significant reduction in radiation dose.”

Click here for more information on Aurora and its digital and AI solutions.

Increasing patient access to precision care

In addition to Aurora, GE HealthCare is proud to showcase the latest additions to its Molecular Imaging portfolio at the EANM 2024 Congress. These solutions aim to enhance usability and increase the accessibility of precision care tools for the global practice of personalized medicine.

As clinicians seek to practice more personalized medicine – including theranostics, a type of precision care that combines diagnostics and therapy – they increasingly look to leverage imaging techniques that more accurately inform diagnoses and measure functional and molecular responses to therapy.

In response, GE HealthCare aims to develop and deliver a range of products that support these efforts and empower global healthcare providers to address the needs of all patient populations:

• MINItrace Magni with solid target technology:[xiii] Designed to be a small footprint, cost effective cyclotron for reliable, in-house production of commercial PET tracers and radiometals – like Gallium-68. When produced in combination with the company’s TRACERcenter – which is designed to serve as a complete PET radiopharmacy solution – the resulting radiopharmaceuticals can help physicians identify and diagnose clinical signs across care areas – including oncology, cardiology, and neurology.[xiv]
• Omni Legend 21 cm: A performance-oriented configuration of the Omni Legend PET/CT scalable platform designed to evolve with healthcare system needs across care areas, including: shorter scan times and lower doses[xv] without compromising image quality in oncology; support for increasing PET amyloid imaging in Alzheimer's diagnosis and treatment follow up in neurology; and exceptional cardiac diagnostics, accommodating a range of tracers – including fast decay and emerging tracers – in cardiology.
• Omni Legend mobile: A portable, all-in-one PET/CT solution that further extends the capabilities of Omni Legend to regional or local scan centers, helping increase access to advanced imaging while helping reduce travel burdens, especially for more vulnerable or remote patient communities.
• MIM Software: A comprehensive software solution portfolio designed to boost efficiency and promote precision care. Key products, including MIM Encore and MIM SurePlan MRT, offer clinicians and researchers intuitive image processing and interpretation, AI-based image segmentation, tumor burden quantitation, practical dosimetry, workflow standardization and automation — all in a single unified vendor-neutral platform.

Driven by its mission to create a world where healthcare has no limits, GE HealthCare is also a proud collaborator with and trusted partner to leading global health and academic institutions around the world. Most recently, the company announced:

• University Medicine Essen’s new Theranostics Center of Excellence: With the aim of increasing access to precision care, GE HealthCare is proud to collaborate with University Medicine Essen (UME) in the establishment of a new Theranostics Center of Excellence. The Center will be outfitted with the latest GE HealthCare technologies and solutions to support the clinical practice and advanced research of more personalized approaches to cancer care in Germany and around the world.
• Thera4Care: An initiative aimed at revolutionizing the use of theranostics to broaden patient access in Europe. The €25.3 million project gathers 29 partners from top European institutions – including GE HealthCare – to expand the use of theranostics in the region by creating, implementing, and disseminating standardized, scalable methods for the production, detection, and monitoring of key theranostic isotopes, from the manufacturing and early delivery of diagnostics through to therapy.

For more information on GE HealthCare’s impressive Molecular Imaging and MIM Software solutions, please visit gehealthcare.com and mimsoftware.com or stop by the company’s booth at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine 2024 Congress in Hamburg, Germany.

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[i] “GE HealthCare Tops List for Third Year in a Row with Highest Number of AI-Enabled Medical Device Authorizations.” GE HealthCare. 22 May 2024. https://www.gehealthcare.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/ge-healthcare-tops-list-for-third-year-in-a-row-with-highest-number-of-ai-enabled-medical-device-authorizations

[ii] Aurora is CE marked. Available for sale in EU countries. Not approved or cleared by the US FDA. Not available for sale in the U.S and other non-EU countries.

[iii] Aurora as compared to NM/CT 870 DR with Optima CT 540.

[iv] 0.35 rotation speed is optional. 0.5 second rotation speed is standard.

[v] 128 slices with the overlapped reconstruction option.

[vi] Clarify DL is CE marked as part of Xeleris V. 510(k) pending at the US FDA. Not available for sale in the United States.

[vii] As demonstrated in clinical evaluationin which 127 exams were rated by total of 9 physicians. Each exam was reconstructed with both Clarify DL and the existing factory reconstruction preset and evaluated by 3 of the physicians.

[viii] ASiR-V reduces dose by 50% to 82% relative to FBP at the same image quality, as defined by low contrast detectability. ASiR-V reduces image noise up to 91% at the same dose. ASiR-V improves spatial resolution up to 2.07X (107%) at same image noise. In clinical practice, the use of ASiR-V may reduce CT patient dose depending on the clinical task, patient size, anatomical location, and clinical practice. A consultation with a radiologist and a physicist should be made to determine the appropriate dose to obtain diagnostic image quality for the particular clinical task. Low Contrast Detectability (LCD), Image Noise, Spatial Resolution and Artifact were assessed using reference factory protocols comparing ASiR-V and FBP. The LCD measured in 0.625 mm slices and tested for both head and body modes using the MITA CT IQ Phantom (CCT183, The Phantom Laboratory), using model observer method.

[ix] The SnapShot Freeze 2 algorithm provides up to 6x improvement in motion blur reduction while maintaining high spatial resolution. This is demonstrated in cardiac phantom testing. The reduction in motion artifacts is comparable to a 0.058s Equivalent Gantry Rotation Speed with effective temporal resolution of 29 msec, as demonstrated in mathematical phantom testing.

[x] Compared to LEHR collimator, with Step & Shoot scan mode. As demonstrated in phantom testing using a bone scan protocol, Evolution processing and a model observer. Because model observer results may not always match those from a human reader, the actual time/ dose reduction depends on the clinical task, patient size, anatomical location and clinical practice. A radiologist should determine the appropriate scan time/dose for the particular clinical task.

[xi] In clinical practice, Evolution options1a (Evolution for Bone, Evolution for Cardiac, Evolution for Bone Planar) and Evolution Toolkit1b are recommended for use following consultation of a Nuclear Medicine physician, physicist and/or application specialist to determine the appropriate dose or scan time reduction to obtain diagnostic image quality for a particular clinical task, depending on the protocol adopted by the clinical site.

a. Evolution Options - Evolution claims are supported by simulation of count statistics using default factory protocols and imaging of 99mTc based radiotracers with LEHR collimator on anthropomorphic phantom or realistic NCAT – SIMSET phantom followed by quantitative and qualitative images comparison.

b. Evolution Toolkit - Evolution Toolkit claims are supported by simulation of full count statistics using lesion simulation phantom images based on various radiotracers and collimators and by showing that SPECT image quality reconstructed with Evolution Toolkit provide equivalent clinical information but have better signal-to-noise, contrast, and lesion resolution compared to the images reconstructed with FBP / OSEM.

[xii] The statement by the GE Healthcare customer described here is based on their own opinions and experiences and on results that were achieved in the customer’s unique setting. Since there is no typical hospital and many variables exist, such as hospital size, case mix, etc., there can be no guarantee that other customers will achieve the same results.

[xiii] Technology in development that represents ongoing research and development efforts. These technologies are not products and may never become products. Not CE marked.

[xiv] MINItrace Magni is designed to produce the following radionuclides for use across care areas: 18F, 11C, 13N, 15O, 68Ga, 89Zr, 61/64Cu and more.

[xv] Omni Legend enables up to 40% PET dose reduction or up to 32% PET scan time reduction compared to Discovery MI 20 cm. As demonstrated in phantom testing