by
Robert Garment, Executive Editor | August 30, 2007
DOTmed Business News talks business with GE, Siemens, Philips, and Toshiba.
Getting an MRI scan is such a common procedure today, it surprises many people to learn that the world's very first MRI scan occurred only 30 years ago, in 1977. That scan took a tedious 5 hours to complete, and the image, by any standards, was extremely poor. Even in the mid-1980s, there were only a handful of MRIs in use.
The technology, clearly, has advanced rapidly in the last 25 years. Diagnostic MRI equipment - which many people now simply refer to as MR - has grown to generate an estimated $4-5 billion in annual sales worldwide. The consensus
of the number of machines installed in the U.S. today is estimated to be around 10,000.
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MR is the youngest of the major imaging modalities, and along with CT, it is one of the two "premier" diagnostic tools today. Each modality has its clearly defined areas where it is preferred. MR, for instance, is well established as the best for neurological studies and MSK (muscular-skeletal) imaging. MR
also has recently found new proponents, in particular, for breast imaging, and in a growing number of cardiovascular studies.
Philips's Achieva X series
features the Achieva 3T
and the Achieva XR,
which both look identical;
the XR, however, is a
convertible 1.5T-to-3T system.
Philips is also leading
the open MR market.
To assess where MR technology is today and where it may be going, DOTmed Business News spoke with the big three OEMs in MR: GE Healthcare, Siemens Medical Solutions, and Philips Medical Systems; we also talked to small,
but growing, Toshiba Medical Systems.
GE's Signa HDx 3T,
the company's top of the
line MR system; the HDx
also comes in a 1.5T
model. GE also has three
other Signa HD models,
and three low-field
open designs.
3 Tesla systems - the next big thing, or too
much of a good thing?
There are two hot topics regarding MR today:
1.) Applications
2.) 3T vs. 1.5T technology
As far as new applications go, breast MR is probably the fastest growing procedure. MR is also being used to image the prostate and the liver. Jim Davis, V.P./General Manager MR Business for GE notes, "there is some very exciting work going on at the Mayo Clinic today around the use of MR elastography, which is a new procedure to image the liver. MR applications have tremendous growth left in them as far as breast, prostate, liver, small bowel, and cardiac imaging," Davis asserts.
