Advances in Cardiac Imaging

While cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered an excellent imaging modality for the heart, offering highly detailed soft tissue anatomical imaging as well as functional assessments, it only makes up about 5 percent of all MRI scans in the United States. This is in part due to the expense, time involved and the complexity in completing these scans and reading them. There were two software innovations that may help increase the use of cardiac MRI by reducing its complexity.

To read the entire article, go to www.dicardiology.com/article/advances-cardiac-imaging-rsna-2016.

At RSNA 2015, Arterys introduced a package of advanced cardiac MRI visualization and quantification software that automates a lot of the processes involved. It also uses a cloud-based platform that allows access to a large amount of computing power needed to process cardiac cine functional data in real time. The software includes 4-D Flow and 2-D phase contrast workflows, and cardiac function measurements. The software is the first clinically available cardiovascular solution that delivers cloud-based, real-time processing of images with resolutions previously unattainable. The company gained U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k) clearance in November 2016 and showed several new advancements at RSNA 2016. Arterys is partnering with GE Healthcare to introduce the software on the Signa MRI systems under the GE name of ViosWorks. However, Arterys said it has aspirations to be a software OEM for several MRI vendors. An additional introduction was Arterys? regurgitation evaluation software that offers several ways to view regurgitation, which has traditionally been difficult to assess on MRI. One view visualizes blood flow velocities with arrows to show direction of flow and a color code to show the speed of the flow. It presents very similar to cardiac ultrasound color flow Doppler. The software can help identify regurgitation jets, vortices and sheer wall stresses, and offers automated quantification. In cardiovascular research, sheer stress evaluation has become a big area of interest because it is believed these stresses may play a role in the formation of atherosclerosis, the degradation of heart valve function, and possibly play a role in the progression of heart failure. So, Arterys also introduced a research sheer stress analysis software package.

- DAVE FORNELL

To read the entire article, go to www.dicardiology.com/article/advances-cardiac-imaging-rsna-2016.