When the investigators publish their reports on the CardiArc in peer review journals customers will have more data to go on and Garner anticipates that there will be an jump in sales.
"However, customers don't have to wait for this data," he says. "They can go and talk to doctors at luminary sites and they can see the system working." Garner says he is promoting this option to customers who are highly interested in purchasing a camera.
Meanwhile, Garner says that the technical staff at CardiArc is also working on a configuration suitable for mobile imaging. "You'll be able to move the system on to a truck, unload it in a physician's office and image patients there."
CardiArc is also working on adding attenuation correction (AC) to the system, so the images will be less prone to artifact. "For instance [breast tissue] tends to attenuate (absorb or deflect) some of the gamma rays coming from the target," he notes. Attenuation correction will help circumvent this problem.
While X-ray-based or solid source AC systems, which make a map of the body, are not hindered by this problem, Garner says the CardiArc should be able to vie with these systems when the attenuation correction is added to the CardiArc camera next year.
"As good as our images are, we feel that they'll be even better with attenuation correction," Garner says.
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