MDCT 2008 - TeraRecon, Inc., applied new innovations in client-server advanced visualization at the 6th "Workstation Face-off" held at the 10th Stanford University International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT.

TeraRecon, Inc., a leader in advanced imaging processing technology and 3D visualization solutions, applied new innovations in client-server advanced visualization at the 6th "Workstation Face-off" held at the 10th Annual Stanford University International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT, held at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas.

The workstation face-off posed challenges at a new level of complexity and functionality to the participants, with clinical four cases to be reviewed in a total of less than 20 minutes. The assigned tasks included CT Colon, CT brain perfusion, quantitative vascular analysis of significantly diseased vessels in the head and neck, simultaneous CT-PET fusion of two pairs of data (one prior pair and one follow-up pair), detection and temporal change analysis of lung nodules from a prior / follow-up pair of CT lung scans, coronary CTA analysis of real-world, sub-optimal data, and processing of a surprise case presented "cold" during the face-off, to be loaded and processed on the spot, within the allotted time.

To meet these challenges, TeraRecon's champion, Dr Christopher Herzog, Chief of Radiology at the Red Cross Clinic in Munich, Germany, applied the latest innovations available in TeraRecon's Aquarius iNtuition system including the first showing of two new advanced applications implemented using client-server technology, and fully integrated cardiac workflow enabling multi-phase coronary analysis and ejection fraction calculation all within the same user interface, unlike solutions that require the data to be reloaded into a different tool, for each analysis. All tasks were completed with high accuracy, blazingly fast performance (even via client-server with bandwidth limitations), workflow optimization and time to spare.

TeraRecon's client-server technology was applied, with the emergency (head/neck vascular and brain perfusion) case processed over a 10mbit bandwidth limitation to simulate remote review by a radiologist not on site when the emergency occurred. While other vendors demonstrated "remote control" technology where a single remote workstation was controlled by the physician using technology concepts similar to "PC Anywhere", TeraRecon deployed true client-server technology where the appropriate tasks are divided between the client and server, to optimize performance, functionality and image quality, while simultaneously allowing multiple users to access the server, an enterprise resource, rather than being restricted to access one workstation which may not have the correct data, and may be needed for use by someone else, on-site (hence blocking access by the remote user).

The highlight of the face-off came when Dr Herzog demonstrated TeraRecon's AquariusWEB technology for delivering the time-sensitive emergency results from the surprise case delivered on CD during the event. As soon as the case was loaded, Dr Herzog was able to deliver via e-mail (for example, to a surgeon's PDA) a fully interactive, fully browser-based 3D model of the examination, to reduce unnecessary delays and ensure the most rapid delivery to the right physician for this time-critical data in an emergency setting.

"We have been participants in the Stanford Face-Off since its very first year, and each year, Dr Rubin sets us new challenges and pushes our boundaries a little further," said Robert Taylor, Ph.D, president and chief operating officer of TeraRecon. "This is nothing but good for our industry as it forces us to rise to new challenges and as we saw today, it clearly demonstrates to the medical imaging community the core differences between the different technology offerings, and the impact these differences can have on patient care. We are extremely happy with the outcome of the face-off today, which demonstrated the unmatched power of our technology to provide ubiquitous access to the broadest range of interpretation tools without compromise on performance or functionality."