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GE Healthcare will highlight innovative solution for assessing stent positioning at TCT 2009

Minimizing risk is important within all medical procedures, but is critical during the deployment of a new stent. GE Healthcare, the $17 billion division of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), will highlight ainnovative solution for assessing stent positioning and deployment during interventional procedures. The announcement was made at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) 2009 meeting in San Francisco, California.

StentViz provides enhanced stent visualization when used with GE Healthcare Innova digital X-ray cardiovascular imaging system. New stent designs, their low metal content, biodegradable materials, steep angulation and fast stent motion can obscure stent visibility. Innova with StentViz easily assesses stent positioning and deployment by clearly visualizing stent borders and details from patient images. Unlike other technologies, it automatically detects both the guidewire and the stent markers to perform an elastic registration that allows the system to compensate for non-rigid stent deformation. In addition, StentViz detects and removes radio-opaque objects for optimal stent visibility and robust performance.

Hooman Hakami, President & CEO, Interventional Systems for GE Healthcare said that the technology can help minimize patient risk. “StentViz allows the physician to see, size and position stents more precisely with respect to existing stents, increasing the potential for a better patient outcome.”

EASY TO USE

Fast and easy to use, StentViz is fully automated and fits into most interventional workflows to streamline procedures. From a cine X-ray acquisition, an enhanced StentViz image is instantly generated at the press of a button.

A cardiac record run with approximately 30 frames is acquired with the balloon and stent markers in place. If the enhanced stent image is non-optimal, the processing can be re-launched by choosing a frame. The image is stored in DICOM format for review and archiving.

“StentViz gives physicians a valuable visualization toolkit that can help improve the long-term success of interventional procedures,” said Hakami “It can help to increase clinical confidence with immediate and routine control of stent deployment. As we increase healthcare quality with advanced technology, we can continue to address the on-going issues of reducing costs and improving access.

About GE Healthcare :
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Source: GE Healthcare