From the March 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


We automated this functionality on our cath labs to support physicians to always drive toward lowest dose as reasonably possible.” There is a cost attached to many of these real-time dose-monitoring features. Kern says that while the clinicians at his facility pay attention to dose protocols, the Philips DoseWise Portal add-on is more expensive than his facility’s budget permits. “Given no limitation on funds, I think that would be an absolutely essential piece of our performance measures, to have good radiation feedback online, in real time,” Kern says. “Not so much for the interventional guys, but for the electrophysiologists, [as] they can rack up some real time on the fluoroscope. To prevent patient injury as well as physician exposure and staff exposure, that would be a good thing. But you have to make it affordable.”

The Real Time Smooth Masking (RSM) technology available with Shimadzu’s Trinias MiX angiography system helps lower radiation dose, says Jarrahlee Holland, a cardiovascular invasive specialist who uses the system at First Coast Heart and Vascular Center, an outpatient facility in Jacksonville, Florida. While using digital subtraction angiography (DSA), which takes the bony tissue out of the image so the blood vessels can be seen more clearly, the RSM technology allows for patient movement without decreasing image quality.
“Your patient can still move and it won’t ruin your whole shot,” Holland says. “You can move the table and get more anatomy in one picture versus stepping down to each body part with a DSA picture.” The feature also necessitates less contrast and fewer images that need to be taken, leading to lower radiation dose for patients and staff, Holland says.
The facility also uses Shimadzu’s roadmap feature, which allows for an adjustable overlay to an acquired image, showing the roadmap and landmarks. Additionally, the Shimadzu C-arm can rotate at 60 degrees per second, which also makes certain procedures shorter and less dose heavy. “You would have to do three to four digital subtraction images to get one image that we can get with the Shimadzu, using RSM and rotational angiography,” Holland says.

Other features, plus flexibility
Kern and his colleagues also sometimes use StentBoost, software offered by Philips that provides a clearer view of a stent in relation to the wall of the blood vessel. Other vendors offer similar software, such as Siemens’ CLEARstent Live, StentViz from GE and Shimadzu’s Score Pro Stent View Plus. Subtraction angiography and image freeze come into play before and after placing a stent, to make sure they have the right result, Kern says.

March 2016 Magazine

Read more stories from the March 2016 issue

More Magazine Features

More Industry Reports