From the April 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


3-D echocardiography, for example, has become a mainstay for mitral valve clip implantation procedures. While 2-D echo gives physicians one view of the valve in silhouette, 3-D echo gives them an up-close frontal view of the valve in motion that’s very similar to the view surgeons would get during actual surgery.

And one of the most buzzed-about products to debut at the American College of Cardiology’s annual show and conference this year was Philip’s Echonavigator, a live image guidance device that fuses 3-D echocardiography and fluoroscopy X-ray. This allows cardiologists to see both soft heart tissue and catheters as they perform minimally invasive heart repairs. During a ACC’s Scientific Session, Dr. Neil J. Weissman, professor of medicine at Georgetown University and director of cardiac ultrasound and ultrasound core laboratories at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Washington Hospital Center, singled this product out during his presentation on devices of the future, but also said manufacturers should step it up a level beyond that. “Superimposing more than two images will become more and more pervasive with the rise of minimally invasive procedures,” he told attendees.


Another emerging technology, MediGuide, acts as a 3-D navigation system that lets physicians evaluate patients using recorded fluoroscopic images instead of images from a live fluoroscopy, allowing physicians to expose patients to less radiation dose — a relevant concern since fluoroscopy uses higher levels of radiation than most modalities.

Miniature sensors embedded in catheters and guidewires specially designed to work with MediGuide technology are magnetically tracked, allowing physicians to see the precise location of the device inside the heart. “The way to look at this is [that it’s similar to] the GPS technology you use in [everyday] life,” says Dr. Dhanunjaya Lakireddy, associate professor at University of Kansas. Doctors like Lakireddy ultimately hope in the future fluoroscopy will only be used to quickly confirm catheter location.

But with great imaging tools comes great responsibility. The use of more modalities and more equipment creates information systems clutter at workstations. Integrated CVIS solutions such as Digisonics’ DigiView and ScImage PicomEnterprise Cardiology, both highly ranked in KLAS research for customer satisfaction, are designed to make data transference and reporting simpler and more efficient for doctors.

April 2013 Magazine

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