GE Healthcare Focuses On Healthymagination At RSNA 2009; First Certified Products On Display In Booth 4029

Commitment to creating technology to deliver healthier experiences for the caregiver and the patient

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CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Miniaturized ultrasound. Navigation during interventional procedures. Innovations in sound wave imaging. At RSNA 2009, GE Healthcare is finding better ways to see more. And using that information to do more.

Earlier this year, GE Healthcare introduced healthymagination – a new commitment to healthcare and to those professionals who deliver it. It’s an ongoing, sustainable initiative where innovative technologies help doctors help their patients live longer, healthier, happier lives by lowering costs, touching more lives and improving quality.

New Healthymagination Ultrasound products; system expansions and breakthroughs

• New Product: Venue 40®, the first product in GE’s new Venue miniaturized ultrasound product line, is also is the first new product validated under GE’s healthymagination initiative – dedicated to improving the quality, access and cost of healthcare. An intuitive touch screen interface makes Venue 40 easy to use and clean, especially for immediate care decisions, or to guide procedures in Interventional Radiology.
• Breakthrough: The LOGIQ® E9 general imaging ultrasound system expands its capabilities with new transducers and software enhancements to provide improved image quality and productivity to pediatric, vascular and cardiac imaging.
• Breakthrough: The new features of the LOGIQ P6 general imaging system include enhancements to help improve image quality, workflow and sonographer comfort. Real-time 4D has also been optimized to an improved performance level.
• Breakthrough: Voluson E8 includes innovative features to help improve workflow efficiencies, outstanding image quality, increased automation and improved speed for advanced imaging applications.
• Breakthrough: Features to help increase efficiency and quality for practices of all sizes were introduced for the ViewPoint Ultrasound Reporting and Image Management solution. Highlights include updates in vascular reporting and thyroid reporting.

Changing the Face of MR: healthymagination introduces new products and innovations

• MR-Touch: a visual palpation device that uses low frequency mechanical sound waves in combination with MRI to measure tissue elasticity. Based on technology invented at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN), MR-Touch extends the principles of physical palpation with a precise, non-invasive, cost-effective way to visually evaluate tissue stiffness in patients as risk for developing liver disease. MR-Touch is a certified healthymagination product that has been third-party validated to reduce costs, improve access to healthcare technologies and improve quality.
• Optima MR360 1.5T: a new MR system that’s designed to combine value and versatility. Packed with advanced MR applications like breast imaging and fMRI, the Optima MR360 is engineered to deliver easy-to-use features to match the needs of today’s radiologist without the hefty price tag. The Optima MR 360 is 510(k) pending at FDA. It is not available for sale in the United States.
• Optima MR450w 1.5T: the 70-centimeter system that overcomes the traditional challenges of wide-bore scanning. While some have surrendered to the notion that 70 centimeters means a sacrifice in image quality, the Optima MR450w is wide bore done right.
• ONI MSK Extreme 1.5T and 1.0T: revolutionizing extremity imaging. These systems are dedicated solely for extremity imaging, meaning patients can enjoy truly outside the bore scanning, while facilities can benefit from a cost-effective solution to MSK imaging that doesn’t require a traditional whole-body scanner.
• Advanced applications: spanning new innovations in neuro, MSK, body, breast, vascular, cardiac and post-processing – ensure existing and new systems stay cutting edge and advance MR.
• New coils: including 32-channel torso, cardiac and head, ensure uncompromised imaging that are dedicated and anatomically optimized for the best image quality.

New innovations in CT

• Gemstone Spectral Imaging (GSI) for CT: GSI is a dual-energy CT imaging solution that uses two nearly simultaneous scans (view to view) at two different energy levels to generate invaluable material characterization information. As an option for GE’s premium Discovery™ CT750 system, GSI technology enables extremely high sampling rates for superior high/low energy registration with single-source architecture. It allows clinicians to clearly and confidently interpret their findings and issue diagnoses to improve patient care.
• Collaboration with Veran Medical Technologies for interventional navigation: A collaboration with Veran Medical Technologies, Inc., has resulted in the validation of compatibility between Veran navigation systems and GE Innova® imaging systems. GE’s imaging system acquires the patient images and exports them to the Veran system in the same room, during the same interventional procedure. The clinician will see the Innova CT image of the patient’s anatomy along with a virtual needle over the anatomy to be used for navigation during the procedure to help speed procedures to improve access while enhancing quality of care.
• Trial to validate the clinical efficacy of Model Based Iterative Reconstruction (MBIR): GE is sponsoring a multi-center trial to validate the clinical efficacy of MBIR as a method to maintain or improve diagnostic information available to clinicians while dramatically lowering radiation dose in routine CT imaging. This trial will use the company’s breakthrough Discovery CT750 HD system, and demonstrates GE’s efforts to advance the standard of care with non-invasive lower dose CT imaging technology. MBIR offers the potential for another leap in resolution and the opportunity to reduce patient dose, even below the levels of today’s CT scanners.
• Advanced Applications on Discovery XR640: Advanced applications offered on the Discovery XR640, including Dual Energy Subtraction, VolumeRAD™ (digital tomography) and Auto Image Paste have changed the ways GE customers think about X-ray and how to best use the technology with their patient populations.
  • Dual Energy Subtraction: Separates soft tissue from bone information, enabling improved detection and characterization of nodules masses and bone lesions.
  • VolumeRAD: Provides multiple high-resolution slice images in a single sweep, removing overlying structures, and reconstructs the image similarly to a CT.
• Convergence of therapeutics and diagnostics in molecular medicine: GE Healthcare simplifies the complexity of radiopharmacy infrastructure into ONE touch-point solution going beyond equipment technology. Expanding upon TRACERcenter-GMP’s platform of state-of-the-art instrumentation, comprehensive documentation and GMP training and consulting services, GE now offers ONE complete service platform, ONE single point of contact with world-wide coverage. With the support of GE Healthcare, the new Quality Assurance and Licensing Packages enable PET tracer production centers to meet GMP guidelines for successful application of operational licenses.
• Enhanced application suite for Discovery PET/CT 600; new Discovery PET/CT 690: All of the Discovery PET/CT 600 series products incorporate industry-leading, MotionFree imaging technologies into the clinical workflow. The system allows clinicians and researchers to align PET and CT gated images to compensate for movement in all regions of the body, most importantly those regions subject to respiration motion. The GE Healthcare booth at RSNA 2009 will be the first public showing of the Discovery PET/CT 690 with BrightSpeed Elite CT, providing advanced scan capabilities, further enhancing imaging quality and diagnostic confidence. GE's industry leading MotionFree imaging technology on the Discovery PET/CT 690 is integrated with VUE Point FX, an advanced high-definition reconstruction technique. Combined, these technologies have the potential to improve small lesion detection, image quality, and better therapy response monitoring.
• New hybrid imaging platform combines CT, SPECT and nuclear medicine detector: The new Discovery NM/CT 670 is a hybrid-imaging platform designed to improve workflow, dose management, and overall image quality. The system combines GE Healthcare’s BrightSpeed Elite16 slice CT, a newly designed SPECT gantry for greater positional flexibility, and the latest advancements in Nuclear Medicine detectors. This innovative system can dramatically reduce scan time of bone imaging protocols, 3D SPECT and CT attenuation correction/localization to shorten acquisition times, improve dose management, and enable more convenient patient scheduling. The Discovery NM/CT 670 is 510(k) pending at FDA. It is not available for sale in the United States.

Mammography innovations

• Introducing Senographe Essential e; 3 mega-pixel monitor: GE Healthcare introduces the Senographe® Essential® e mammography system and the 3 mega pixel (MPX) monitor as expansions of their mammography portfolio. The new Senographe Essential e is equipped with technology that allows clinicians to meet their specific technology and workflow needs, with the ability to add interventional capabilities where needed. With the 3mpx monitor, technologists and radiologists are able to have a clearer vision of the breast image through technology that helps refine and define the breast tissue and can eliminate retakes.

Surgery innovations

• More than 2,300 OEC mobile C-arm fluoroscopic imaging systems delivered: More than 2,300 units of the OEC® 9900 Elite C-arm mobile fluoroscopic imaging systems have been shipped to customers in the U.S. over the past 18-month period. The shipment dates extend from June 1, 2008 through October 3, 2009, with normal shipments generally ranging from 1,500 to 1,700 units. Nearly three years ago, the future of GE’s Surgery business unit was in jeopardy as a consent decree with the FDA prohibited the business from manufacturing or distributing OEC surgical equipment to customers until quality system processes were improved to meet FDA standards. Remarkably, hundreds of OEC C-arm customers who wanted an OEC C-arm made the decision to wait.

Image-guided interventional care innovations

• Interventional Visualization: VolumeShare™ 4 multi-modality volume view software is an option for the multi-modality, image review Advantage Workstation™. VolumeShare 4 integrates 3D images from Innova® 3D, Innova CT as well as CT, MR, Pet and PET/CT datasets to enable a number of new interventional visualization functions that are targeted to image-guided interventional therapy. Processing, integration and image overlay are achieved with a single workstation, with a single, convenient user interface, helping to shorten procedure time and improving access to image-guided interventional care.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE - News). 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

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Media Contact:
GE Healthcare
Autumn Latimore
T: 414-721-4013
C: 262-497-2753
autumn.latimore@ge.com