From the September 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Manufacturers need to tailor the equipment and make it easier for radiologists to offer the exam to women so that it is more patient friendly,” says Morris. She adds that several of the manufacturers have shown interest, but that it might take a small, start-up company to stir things up.



Cardiac MR
Cardiac MR is a challenging exam because of its complexity and long scan times, but the manufacturers have developed a plethora of new technologies to streamline the process. “Not every technologist can actually perform [cardiac MR],” says Ioannis Panagiotelis, chief marketing officer at GE Healthcare. “You need a relatively high level of knowledge in order to properly perform the examination.”

But if 3-D cardiac MR is performed at a very high speed, then the images can be reformatted so the user can get the exact planes they need to obtain a four chamber view of the heart. If it was performed in 2-D, then the user would have to hit the exact planes, and many technologists have difficulty doing that.

Siemens’ Day Optimizing Throughput (DOT) technology is also making cardiac MR easier for technologists to perform. The software incorporates several techniques, including auto-align algorithms that guide the MR after a quick scan of the body part and line up the slices for the different cardiac orientations.

“In the past we often saw inconsistency and difficulties with reproducibility in cardiac MR, but it’s now something that we don’t have to worry about,” says Stuart Schmeets, senior director of MR marketing at Siemens. “DOT has made that application much easier for people to adopt in their institution.”

Recently, MR was proven to be a useful tool in spotting stroke and heart attack in people who have no history of cardiovascular disease. A study published in the journal Radiology found that when MR plaque imaging was combined with carotid artery ultrasound, it was able to assess carotid plaque composition and predict a future cardiovascular event.

The researchers believe that this will increase the use of MR in determining which patients may need more aggressive treatments, if they are at higher risk of cardiovascular events. CT has also proven to be effective in evaluating the risk of heart attacks and other adverse cardiac events, but MR is preferred because it doesn’t involve radiation exposure.

But even though the exam is becoming easier to perform and is showing promise for new indications, MR is only used for a small portion of cardiac exams. About 17 million to 20 million cardiac exams are performed with ultrasound, but less than 300,000 exams are done with MR annually in the U.S. and Europe combined, according to GE data.

September 2015 Magazine

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