Siemens Medical Solutions USA has received FDA 510(k) market clearance for the SOMATOM® Definition AS, the world's first adaptive CT scanner. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston is one of the first facilities to install the scanner, adding to the SOMATOM Definition Dual Source MUSC installed in September 2006.

The SOMATOM Definition AS adapts to virtually any patient, adapts for complete dose protection, adapts for new dimensions, and adapts to the user's space.

"The SOMATOM Definition AS goes beyond slices and detector rows to addresses the overall versatility and usefulness of a CT scanner," said Dr. Joseph Schoepf, associate professor of Radiology and Cardiology, and director of CT Research and Development at MUSC. "It truly allows you to adapt the CT scanning to your individual patients."
The SOMATOM Definition AS provides tremendous benefit with the Adaptive Dose Shield technology, eliminating unnecessary overradiation. "Siemens is constantly focused on improving diagnostic quality while reducing dose in computed tomography. Patient safety has consistently been, and still is, our number one priority. With our SOMATOM product family we continuously develop new ideas and solutions for maintaining ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) guidelines to achieve success and to integrate these developments into our systems for dose reduction and improvement in patient safety." Peter Kingma, vice president, Computed Tomography, Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.

Until now, many CT vendors have fallen prey to unnecessary dose both before and at the end of the spiral scan range, which has been a function of spiral multi-slice imaging. As detector size and slice counts grow, the "pre and post over scan range" problem becomes more acute, particularly where older gantry designs are simply updated with newer detector designs to save cost for the manufacturer. Only Siemens' unique Adaptive Dose Shield addresses this growing issue by dynamically blocking the unnecessary dose before and after the spiral scan, ensuring that the only dose applied to the patient is dose that is clinically relevant.

The SOMATOM Definition AS adapts to each patient's clinical situation and also opens the door to new applications in CT imaging. The unique Adaptive 4D Spiral mode of the SOMATOM Definition AS is able to address functional imaging (perfusion images of blood flow over time) of whole organs. This allows Siemens to offer dynamic information of up to 27 cm. In the case of a stroke, physicians can use whole-organ perfusion imaging not only for a small part of the brain, but for all of it.

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