From the October 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


“This technology was used before in [the] research domain,” Hartjes says.

Another application, called 4-D-TRANCE, allows for visualization of inflammation in the vessel wall of the brain without contrast for an easier diagnosis of vasculitis.


The goal is for Philips to help its customers reduce costs by increasing scanning speeds and reducing rescans, as well as make better diagnoses and treatment decisions, thereby lowering readmission rates.

“That trickles down to other parts of the equation in hospital costs,” Hartjes says.

A few months ago, Philips released a new set of musculoskeletal coils designed to improve image quality and coverage and fit more patients. The design of the coils allows them to tolerate higher acceleration speeds, Hartjes says.

ScanMed
This past summer ScanMed, which manufactures MR coils, unveiled an innovative pediatric brain coil set, with coils of three different sizes that can be used to scan premature infants to children up to age 18. Clinicians can switch out the small, medium and large head coils without having to reconnect the base to the MR machine, says Natalie Hussey, ScanMed’s marketing manager.

“If the coil doesn’t fit, you can quickly switch it out,” Hussey says.

Previously, coils were made for either children or adults.

“It was sort of a one-size-fits-all approach, which doesn’t produce the quality of images that you need to diagnose,” Hussey says. “None of them were optimized for the size of the child.”

Neurological scanning is becoming more common for children, especially with more attention being paid to football and other sports-related injuries.

The company also recently unveiled a dedicated eight- and 16-channel wrist and ankle coil.

The coils are compatible with GE and Siemens MR scanners. ScanMed is working with Philips on compatibility, and all are pending FDA clearance. The company is looking for demo sites to improve and optimize the pediatric coils.

ScanMed is also working with Duke University to investigate using a dual-tuned, multinuclear coil to diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“Hydrogen is the best atom to image with overall because it is present in all tissue and has a net nuclear spin,” Hussey says. “However, hydrogen isn't the best atom for imaging certain organs and pathologies. In the case of lung imaging, because patients need to breathe, it's hard to get good images with just hydrogen because the movement disrupts the acquisition process, so the images are often blurry. Our coil utilizes a gas mixture of oxygen, which allows for free-breathing, and 19F is an inert gas that distributes quickly through the lungs and transmits a bright signal, making it so we can image in real time without the blurriness used by hydrogen.

“We hope to then take this technology and apply it to other areas of the body where it is difficult to get great images with hydrogen alone without clinics having to invest in expensive multinuclear systems.”

Siemens Healthineers
In June, Siemens Healthineers received FDA clearance for its newest 3T MR system, the MAGNETOM Vida. The system features the company's new BioMatrix technology, which takes into account the physiological and anatomical differences between patients, including size and sex, providing a more personalized approach to MR scanning.

The BioMatrix technology includes head/neck coils designed with what Siemens calls CoilShim to reduce variability in image quality based on patient anatomy.

“If you want to get consistent images, you need to recognize that variability and adjust your imaging,” says Heather Lewis, MR marketing director for Siemens Healthineers. “Previous MR systems have not addressed targeted regions in this way. For this reason, they were not as precise.”

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