No charge upgrades demonstrate commitment to MR customers
Maximizing usability of older systems through upgrades
New generation improves overall MR capabilities
New Applications, including Volume Imaging and Fat Suppression, are key to new era of HD MR imaging
Dubai, UAE; January 29, 2008: GE Healthcare, the US$17 billion healthcare business of General Electric Company (GE), is celebrating 25 years of its Continuum technology non-obsolescence program - a commitment to its magnetic resonance (MR) customers which includes a combination of no charge and cost-effective purchasable, software and hardware upgrades for its installed base MR customers. The company is showcasing its MR offerings at Arab Health 2008 in Dubai.
ContinuumPaks
As new MR systems continue to be introduced year after year, GE understands that customers need a way to keep current without having to replace entire systems. "We have GE customers with eighteen year old Signa magnets who have upgraded to our most current system platforms. There is no better, more cost effective, way for them to remain state-of-the-art in their community," said David Handler, general manager of global MR product marketing.
GE announced three new no-charge ContinuumPak software upgrades for the thousands of installed Signa MR systems around the world. "These new ContinuumPaks provide customers with system improvements and powerful new imaging techniques which should improve their clinical capability and productivity," said Handler.
The ContiuumPak software upgrades encompass Signa HDx, Signa HDe and Signa Excite - all multifaceted systems that allow for optimized high-resolution acquisition and imaging of various parts of the body.
New Marquee Applications called Cube™ and IDEAL
In addition to these free of charge upgrades and in an effort to improve overall MR image quality and productivity and continue the company's leadership in MR technologies, GE Healthcare has introduced the Signa HDxt as the next generation High Definition MR scanner, available in both 1.5T and 3.0T field strengths. Highlighting the new system are two new marquee applications called Cube™and IDEAL.
Cube 3D is available for both 1.5T and the 3.0T systems, and can replace standard 2D acquisitions acquired in multiple planes with a single highly-accelerated 3D volume scan. Users are able to review high-definition, 3D data from one acquisition in any plane - axial, sagittal, coronal, oblique - with no gaps or resolution loss. The submillimeter isotropic voxel size and enhanced tissue contrast typical for Cube acquisitions allows radiologists to visualize lesions as small as two millimeters and get consistent image quality and reproducible results with automated protocols optimized for each anatomy.
"Cube is an ideal solution for radiologists looking to apply three-dimensional imaging to MR procedures," said Jim Davis, vice president of GE's global MR business. "While providing outstanding image quality and critical image detail necessary for early detection and confident diagnosis, this application will improve workflow productivity by capturing the entire 3D stories in one, time-efficient scan to save overall exam time."
Cube provides users with the same standard plane views, with the option to go back and reformat data into additional planes should questions arise. High-resolution reformatting in the axial, sagittal, coronal and oblique planes is done right on the operating console, with fast, easy reformatting tools that take less than a minute to run.
Also new on the Signa HDxt platform is IDEAL, an imaging technique resulting in four images, all from one acquisition, succeeding where traditional fat suppression techniques often fail. Even with challenging anatomy or metal implants, IDEAL provides robust water-only images while also providing users with important information from fat images as well. The outstanding uses of IDEAL include Uniform fat suppression, Multiple contrasts and Minimal artifacts.
In addition to Cube and IDEAL, the several applications available for the Signa HDxt 1.5T and 3.0T MR systems have also expanded imaging visualization for neurological, vascular, cardiac, and liver diagnostic assessment. These include the AngioCard which expedites vascular reporting and enhances communication with schematics, images and movies provided to reports for referring physicians and StarMap, which is used to Assess iron deposition in the heart and liver; Flow Analysis, used which quantifies flow characteristics which complements phase contrast.
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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
