GE Healthcare's VolumeShuttle and SnapShot Pulse deliver substantial patient dose reduction with equal or improved image quality

Next generation of CT imaging technology announced at Arab Health 2008

Dubai, UAE; February 02, 2008: Meeting the growing demand for dose management and improved imaging, GE Healthcare now offers improved dose reduction results for both diagnostic cardiac and neuro perfusion CT exams.

GE LightSpeed VCT XT - SnapShot Pulse and VolumeShuttle

GE's SnapShot Pulse technology for prospectively gated diagnostic cardiac CT exams has been proven to reduce a patient's radiation exposure by up to 83 per cent and improve image quality. These results have been validated from thousands of exams at sites around the world.

GE's innovative VolumeShuttle technology delivers twice the anatomical coverage (80mm) with up to 24 per cent less radiation exposure compared to a conventional 40mm cine perfusion protocol.  This single injection acquisition generates clinically comparable perfusion maps and angiographic studies and allows clinicians to see more anatomy and enables whole organ anatomical and physiological assessment.

Both SnapShot Pulse and VolumeShuttle are offered on the GE LightSpeed VCT XT configuration, enabled by a real-time scan control architecture that ensures precise control of exposure and table position.

GE Healthcare introduced the LightSpeed VCT, the world's first volume CT system now with over 2,000 systems installed, capable of capturing images of the heart and coronary arteries in just five heartbeats.

By building on the strong foundation of LightSpeed VCT, technologies such as SnapShot Pulse and VolumeShuttle offer healthcare professionals the opportunity to expand the clinical utility of their system. 

Next Generation - HDCT Technologies

In addition to these improvements, GE Healthcare has showcased at Arab Health 2008 its recent technical and clinical advances from a portfolio of groundbreaking CT technologies that GE intends to incorporate into its next generation of computed tomography (CT) scanners.  GE announced these advances under the umbrella of "HDCT technologies" - given their potential to revolutionize what clinicians may see with HDCT images, similar to the quantum leap in image clarity that HD video provides.

"We are re-inventing CT to help them clearly see more detail. We're working with new functional and time-based CT information that might help them know more. And we're investing to provide them unprecedented diagnostic clarity using considerably less dose. We believe High Definition Computerized Tomography technologies are transformational and we're excited about the clinical possibilities that they may enable," said Gene Saragnese, vice president of Molecular Imaging and CT for GE Healthcare.

GE is exploring HDCT technologies to help clinicians potentially see more, know more and administer fewer doses - a new direction in the industry that's based solidly on market research, and clinician feedback from utilizing nearly 2,000 LightSpeed VCT systems - the industry-leading CT system, three years running.

"Spatial resolution improvements through HDCT technologies represent our largest R&D investment area today, and, we believe, the greatest opportunity for us to meet the field's top demand.  Everything we do is aimed at helping our customers improve patient care. We believe the recent advances made possible by the HDCT technologies we're unveiling today will allow us to re-imagine CT and fulfil that demand in the future," said Saragnese.

-Ends-

NOTE:
The technologies in development discussed here represent ongoing research and development efforts.  These technologies are not products and may never become products. They are not for sale. They have not been cleared or approved by the FDA for commercial availability.  Although none of these technologies are currently available for commercial sale in any country, they indicate areas in which GE Healthcare is either currently investing internal resources and/or engaging in collaborative development projects with investigators in the global CT research community.

About GE Healthcare:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a US$17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 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.

For further information, please contact: 
Heather McPhail / Adnan Abdel-Razzak
ASDA'A Public Relations
Exclusive Affiliate of Edelman PR Worldwide in Middle East and North Africa
Tel: (+971 4) 334 4550
Email: h.mcphai@asdaa.com / a.razzak@asdaa.com

© Press Release 2008