Healthcare Technology Featured Article

November 29, 2011

GE Healthcare Announces Additional Investment of $300 Million in Low-Dose Technologies


GE Healthcare, provider of new-age medical technologies and service, at RSNA 2011, announced an additional investment of $300 million for the development of low-dose technologies in addition to announcing a wide range of radiation-dose management solutions. The company's technology offerings have effectively re-shaped “low dose” via an array of dose-reporting offerings, iPad apps, online courses, and new websites as well as with new-age image reconstruction solutions and advanced Dose Check upgrades.

GE Healthcare's range of low-dose technologies make it possible for physicians to offer medical care that is dose-conscious and enables radiologists and technologists to bring down patient dose and enhance quality of image.

In a release, Tom Gentile, president and CEO of Healthcare Systems at GE Healthcare, said that, “Medical imaging has been indispensible in helping physicians diagnose disease and has positively affected millions of lives. GE's commitment to patient care means equipping our customers with revolutionary tools that help them provide the highest level of care and diagnostic accuracy while striving for the lowest possible dose.”

GE Healthcare's low-dose solutions feature DoseWatch which is a multi-modality solution for monitoring patient dose; Veo which is an image reconstruction technology solution for CT imaging, upgrades for dose-alert, free iPad apps for radiation safety and webinars that focus on low-dose education along with CE credits for healthcare personnel.

Also included in the low-dose solutions are Innova which has been designed as interventional imaging systems for optimizing dose efficiency and ASiR which is a low-dose technology offering provided within the GE Healthcare CT portfolio.

DoseWatch, the dose-tracking and reporting solution from GE has been developed to enable monitoring of patient exposure levels over a period of time to help optimize quality of care provided. The solution leverages existing dose awareness solutions from a wide number of systems designed by different equipment vendors.

The suite of single and biplane imaging systems within the Innova family deliver improved image quality via Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE) across an extensive range of interventional processes. Furthermore, the systems are capable of improving radiation dose efficiency for the patient by making it possible for clinicians to deliver a balanced formula of radiation exposure and quality of image for interventional procedures.

The CT Masters Series educational courses from GE featuring free CT Low Dose Webinars have already seen more than 3000 downloads this year alone and has won Category A Continuing Education credits approval from the American Society of Radiologic Technologists.

Leading physicians across Europe leverage GE's CT Masters Series educational courses at low dose symposiums. GE's Brilliant program supports mobile C-arm users in effectively managing radiation dose and in improving images to optimize patient care. The educational program features an array of C-arm dose management classes as well as iPad application and reference tools. The OEC Radiation Safety iGuide app has already seen more than 2,000 downloads since its introduction about a year ago.

Veo which has been designed as a Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction technology is capable of delivering high image performance at CT low-dose levels while its sub-mSv abilities help in providing confident diagnosis which lower noise (standard deviation), and support enhanced levels of low contrast detectability and spatial resolution in addition to reducing low signal artifacts.



Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for HealthTechZone. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell
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