ERLANGEN, 3 March 2016 -- This year's European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna will include innovations from Siemens Healthcare in the area of medical imaging and therapy. Siemens' products and solutions help healthcare providers worldwide deal with the challenges of changing healthcare systems. In times of tight budgets and increasing time pressure, Siemens solutions are geared to obtaining high-quality results in diagnostics and interventional therapy with maximum efficiency.

At ECR, Siemens Healthcare will introduce new applications that will reduce the time needed for MRI neuro examinations, increasing patient throughput and reducing costs per scan. In MRI, neurological imaging accounts for a majority of all examinations. A new application from Siemens Healthcare employs an innovative technique to acquire imaging slices simultaneously rather than sequentially – reducing routine acquisition times by up to 68% for diffusion tensor imaging.1 This application – Simultaneous Multi-Slice – is first being introduced for brain examinations, bringing advanced techniques such as DTI and Bold into the clinical routine. Advanced examinations can be very lengthy, and Simultaneous Multi-Slice reduces scan times to lengths compatible with the clinical routine. While the application is initially being introduced for advanced brain examinations, Siemens sees great potential to accelerate further routine examinations of the brain, orthopedics, and abdominal areas.

A further innovative application called GOBrain enables clinically validated, push-button brain examinations in just five minutes. Facilitated by Siemens' high-channel density coils and the unique MRI scanning software, DotGO, all clinically essential image orientations and contrasts are acquired at the push of a button. GOBrain was developed in collaboration with Athinoula A. Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. Utilizing its key technologies, Siemens Healthcare is working with its collaboration partners to further clinically validate push-button, multi-contrast examinations for other body regions.
Robotic X-ray system Multitom Rax
Multitom Rax (Robotic Advanced X-ray) now enables examinations in a wide range of clinical areas to be performed using only a single X-ray system for the first time, which makes examinations less painful and less time-consuming. "We see the Multitom Rax as a universal device that covers all aspects of X-ray diagnostics. You could call it radiology's answer to the Swiss army knife," says Prof. Michael Lell, Senior Physician at the Imaging Science Institute of the University Hospital Erlangen. The new system can be used in a wide range of applications, from radiography and emergency medicine to orthopedics, selected angiography or fluoroscopy, and can thus help optimize clinical work processes. The fact that the detector can be freely positioned means that quite different X-ray images, both static and dynamic, can be taken in a single room using a single system. The two ceiling-mounted arms on Multitom Rax can be moved into position automatically using robotic technology, and they can also be moved manually, servo motor supported, when required – to make fine adjustments, for example.

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