Leveraging the Innovation of GE's LightSpeed VCT to Further Enhance Cardiac Imaging

GE originally designed the LightSpeed VCT, the world's first volume CT system, to easily integrate with its PET technology.


"Developing the world's only volumetric, 64-slice PET/CT is a logical extension of our success with the LightSpeed VCT," said

Gene Saragnese vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare's global Molecular Imaging and CT business.

The LightSpeed VCT is able to noninvasively capture images of the heart and coronary arteries in as few as five heartbeats. In a single rotation, the system creates 64 sub-millimetric-thin images, totaling 40 millimeters of anatomical coverage. These images are combined with the Discovery STE metabolic and physiological PET images to form a three-dimensional fused view of the patient's anatomy and corresponding function for the physician to analyze.

"The Discovery VCT, like the LightSpeed VCT, was built for physicians and molecular imaging researchers based on their clinical needs, from the ground up," said Saragnese. "The speed and resolution of the LightSpeed VCT combined with the advanced imaging capabilities of Discovery Dimension PET platform will keep GE at the forefront of diagnostic cardiovascular care."

GE the Industry Leader in Cardiac PET/CT

GE's flagship Discovery PET/CT system is the cardiac and whole body PET/CT market leader, providing physicians with anatomical and physiological information and helping to improve diagnostic confidence when assessing coronary artery disease and cardiac viability. GE has invested more than $160 million in the research and development of hybrid imaging technology and holds 25 related patents.

The company first began its work combining images with the development of the GE Millennium VG Hawkeye SPECT/CT system in 1999, and launched the first commercially available PET/CT, the Discovery LS, in 2001.< <

About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform and treat disease, so their 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 $15 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 43,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit www.gehealthcare.com.

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