GE Healthcare, Arterys Partner On Seven-Dimensional Cardiac Imaging
By Jof Enriquez,
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GE Healthcare and privately-held Arterys, Inc. announced at the 101st Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago the launch of a cloud-enabled, software as a service (SaaS) intelligence platform for cardiac imaging. The Arterys system can process seven-dimensional data (three in space, one in time, three in velocity direction) of cardiac scans, and will be made available as part of GE's new ViosWorks cardiac imaging system, running on new GE MRI machines.
"We are excited to collaborate with Arterys and introduce this innovative cardiac MR solution that can capture seven-dimensional viewing capabilities of the heart," said Ioannis Panagiotelis, chief marketing officer, Global MR at GE Healthcare, in a statement. "With cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death in the world, we believe that this cloud-enabled technology will help us to provide value not only for clinicians by delivering advanced visualization and quantification of cardiovascular function, but also help simplify cardiovascular examinations and address significant patient needs in cardiovascular disease."
According to the Arterys website, the system's process involves imaging the entire chest with anatomy, temporal, and flow data in a single sequence. Imaging is completed in ten minutes compared to the usual 60-90 minute duration of typical MRI scans. The data is sent to the Arterys Cloud for quantification and visualization in a browser, from which users can create clinical reports in under ten minutes, obtain key flow, function values, and volume quantification, send screenshots and video captures, and sync data with a cloud-based picture archiving and communication system (PACS).
The Arterys system received its CE Mark and market clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March 2014, and is currently used for research purposes in unspecified facilities in the U.S. and Europe. Arterys will power ViosWorks-enabled GE MRI machines in clinical practice in more hospitals soon.
"We are extremely pleased to announce our partnership with GE Healthcare in conjunction with the launch of our first cardiac care solution, the first self-learning system of its kind to visualize and quantify blood flow leveraging a standard MRI machine," said Fabien Beckers, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Arterys, in the statement. "This pivotal milestone for the company is directly in line with our vision to transform medical imaging by bringing automatic quantitative data and deep learning to healthcare applications through a GPU smart cloud platform that can be applied to many areas of medical imaging including neurology and oncology."
GE Healthcare is trying to convince facilities and healthcare systems that cloud-based radiology services are more reliable and cost-effective than local image processing resources. Besides Arterys-powered ViosWorks, the company also introduced at the RSNA Annual Meeting a similar platform called Health Cloud, which is based on the company's Predix cloud technology. The service allows clinicians to share 3D images and collaborate on care plans remotely.