WAUKESHA, Wis., October 24, 2005 - GE Healthcare's LightSpeed VCT, the world's first volume computed tomography (CT) system, was recognized by the Wall Street Journal in the Medical Device category of the publication's global Technology Innovation Awards. The annual awards recognize technological breakthroughs by individuals, companies and organizations around the world in a wide range of areas, including medicine.

The Wall Street Journal received approximately 750 applications from nearly two dozen countries for the awards event. Winners were selected by an independent panel of judges based on true innovation, the technology's impact on an industry, and rigorous data demonstrating benefits.

"We are honored that GE Healthcare's technology was chosen as one of only six honorees in the Medical Devices category of this thorough and competitive awards event," said Joe Hogan, president and CEO of GE Healthcare. "The LightSpeed VCT is the only technology capable of 5-beat cardiac, and GE built this technology for physicians, based on their clinical needs, from the ground up."
In a single rotation, the LightSpeed VCT creates 64 submillimeter images, totaling 40 millimeters of anatomical coverage, which are combined to form a three-dimensional view of the patient's anatomy for the physicians to analyze. As a result, the LightSpeed VCT enables physicians to noninvasively capture the image of any organ in one second and perform a whole body trauma scan in less than 10 seconds.

The LightSpeed VCT also has the capability to attain 43-millisecond temporal resolution, which means physicians can effectively freeze the motion of the heart in a scan and secure extremely high-quality images of coronary arteries at submillimeter. As a result, GE's LightSpeed VCT enables physicians to capture images of the heart and coronary arteries in just five heartbeats - something no other CT system can offer.

Clinical applications of the LightSpeed VCT include:

- 5-Beat Cardiac: A comprehensive view of the heart and coronary arteries with submillimeter resolution in five seconds. This coverage helps reduce beat-to-beat variability, resulting in more robust, repeatable procedures, as well as greater vessel visualization and shorter breath holds for sick patients.
- Triple RuleOut: The ability to help clinicians rule out (or in) the three most life-threatening critical conditions in chest pain in one single scan: aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism and coronary artery disease.
- Stroke WorkUp: The ability to dynamically acquire both anatomy and perfusion/blood flow to the brain in a single scan.

The award winners can be found online at www.wsj.com.

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