If you've ever felt trapped in an endless MR heart scan — and many have real troubles with the lengthy, claustrophobic experience — a new GE technology may be just what the doctor will soon order.

That's important not just for convenience but because heart disease is one of the world's major killers and one that MRs are vital to combat. This year cardiovascular disease will be fatal to more people than any other ailment, according to grim new statistics from The World Health Organization.

“Cardiovascular disease isn’t just a European issue, it’s a human issue,” said Anja Brau, director of global cardiac magnetic resonance at GE Healthcare, whose Munich team devised the new software that speeds up heart scans.
The new technology, ViosWorks, which is not yet commercially available, does in 10 to 15 what now typically takes 45 minutes to an hour, showing the blood flow in the heart in seven dimensions – 3 in space, 1 in time, and 3 in velocity direction.



GE Healthcare showed the new technology at the recent Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting in Chicago.

In addition to letting doctors deal with heart attacks in real time much faster, the new developments will let the MRI machines do scans faster, increasing their throughput. And ViosWorks works with existing machines.

The new technology will also lead to further innovations, said Brau, in a GE report. “As exciting and encouraging as these breakthroughs are, they are also just the beginning of what we can achieve.”

GE partnered with privately-held Arterys, according to an announcement by that company. "We are excited to collaborate with Arterys and introduce this innovative cardiac MR solution," said Ioannis Panagiotelis, chief marketing officer, Global MR at GE Healthcare, adding, "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."

The Arterys analytics platform integrates cloud computation and machine learning into an intelligence platform designed to significantly enhance standard medical imaging. The GE software is its first application.

"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.

This application is part of the company's larger strategy to "transform medical imaging by bringing automatic quantitative data and deep learning to health care applications through a GPU [graphics processing unit] smart cloud platform that can be applied to many areas of medical imaging, including neurology and oncology."

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