VIENNA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SuperSonic Imagine, the ultrasound company that pioneered breakthrough ShearWave™ Elastography technology, today announced another major breakthrough in ultrasound imaging: UltraFast™ Doppler. The company, based in Aix-en-Provence, France, unveiled this revolutionary technology at the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, Euroson and Ultraschall Meeting.
Color Flow Imaging and Pulsed Wave Doppler are well-established ultrasound tools that analyze blood flow and are critical to cardiovascular disease assessment and cancer diagnosis.
On Aixplorer’s fully patented UltraFast imaging platform, UltraFast Doppler unites Color Flow Imaging with Pulsed Wave Doppler. The result is never-seen-before ultra-high frame rate Color Flow clips that are up to ten times faster than conventional Color Doppler. Remarkably, the same technology also acquires fully quantifiable Doppler data throughout the Color box, enabling the generation of post-processed Pulsed Wave Doppler spectra from multiple locations in the same image.
These new advances in Doppler technology introduce a new era of flow imaging, workflow efficiency and diagnostic confidence.
Peter Burns, Professor of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto commented, “This technology promises to overcome two challenges faced by vascular sonographers every day when they use conventional duplex scanners. First, conventional color frame rates are too low to show real arterial hemodynamics, with pathology often masked by aliasing artifacts and second, the pulsed Doppler examination is a separate and time consuming process of searching for the optimal signal. UltraFast Doppler provides high frame rates, less aliasing and the ability to show spectra at every point in a stored color loop. It provides more accurate flow imaging and will enable more effective workflow in the vascular lab.”
In 2008, SuperSonic Imagine made worldwide headlines with its Aixplorer® MultiWave™ Ultrasound System that hit the market with impeccable image quality and an elastography technique never before seen. The Aixplorer is the only system in the world that has ShearWave™ Elastography imaging, the first major innovation in ultrasound since Doppler. This industry leading technology gives real-time, quantitative information about tissue stiffness by measuring and displaying local tissue elasticity on a color-coded map, in kilopascals1. The assessment ShearWave Elastography was validated in the largest breast clinical trial2 ever undertaken by an ultrasound company (1800 lesions, 16 sites around the world) with proven reproducibility and increased ultrasound specificity while maintaining a high sensitivity. ShearWave Elastography has been adopted by physicians around the world as a vital tool to increasing diagnostic precision and confidence.
“ShearWave Elastography brought a new type of information to physicians to improve their diagnostic confidence. Today, with UltraFast Doppler, we are reinventing the Doppler analysis by breaking a 25 year-old rule in ultrasound of having to choose between flow imaging and flow quantification,” said Jeremy Bercoff, Scientific Expert and Co-Founder of SuperSonic Imagine. “We are very excited to introduce this new ultrafast technology feature and we are confident it will bring tremendous clinical benefits to physicians.”
SuperSonic Imagine is showcasing exceptional imaging quality, ShearWave Elastography and UltraFast Doppler at WFUMB 2011 Booth 213, Hall E at the Austria Center, Vienna or visit www.supersonicimagine.com.
About SuperSonic Imagine:
Founded in 2005 and based in Aix-en-Provence, France, SuperSonic Imagine is an innovative, multinational medical imaging company dedicated to developing a revolutionary ultrasound system: the Aixplorer®. This system leverages a unique MultiWave™ technology that enables the user to detect, characterize and, in the future, treat palpable and non-palpable masses. MultiWave technology is based on combining two types of waves: an ultrasound wave that provides exceptional imaging in B-mode, and a shear wave, ShearWave™ Elastography, which measures and displays the stiffness of tissue in kilopascals1. ShearWave Elastography is user-skill independent with reproducible results. Aixplorer is CE mark approved since 2008 and has FDA clearance since 2009 and has several clinical applications: breast (and 3D breast), thyroid, abdomen, liver, musculo-skeletal, prostate, and gynaecological (excluding obstetrics). SuperSonic Imagine has both a direct sales and distribution network worldwide, including Hologic Inc. (Nasdaq: HOLX) for the breast care market in the USA and Canon Marketing in Japan. SuperSonic Imagine holds the exclusive right, title and interest to 25 international patents and submissions in diagnostic imaging and therapy applications. Company investors include Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (EdRIP), Auriga Partners, Crédit Agricole Private Equity (CAPE), NBGI Ventures, Bioam, Mérieux Développement, Wellington Partners, Innobio, Canon (NYSE:CAJ), and IXO Private Equity.
For further information about SuperSonic Imagine please visit our website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF9xZPZai_s
1 Quantification tool is available outside the USA
2 Assessment of the Clinical Value of SuperSonic ShearWave Elastography in the ultrasonic evaluation of breast lesions