Philips is reporting advances in its development of a new version of its flagship Azurion angiography platform that integrates spectral CT technology into the system in a single room for improved image-guided interventional radiology procedures.
The company's Philips Spectral Angio CT suite was developed to investigate the impact that spectral imaging could have on interventional procedures. While Philips and other companies have developed hybrid angio/CT suites to better integrate angiography with sophisticated CT imaging, Philips hopes to take that functionality to a new level with spectral CT.
The Spectral Angio CT suite from Philips combines the company's Azurion angiography platform with spectral CT technology.Spectral CT (also known as dual-energy CT) is designed to give radiologists additional information on potential pathology. Philips has been making major investments in spectral CT over the past several years, including the launch of its flagship Spectral CT 7500 system in 2021. Meanwhile, Azurion has been the company's top-of-the-line intervention system since 2017.
The new hybrid suite combines Spectral CT 7500 with the latest version of Azurion, Azurion with FlexArm. Philips hopes that combining both imaging modalities in a single suite will enable clinicians to better perform minimally invasive procedures for applications including oncology, stroke, and trauma.
Philips noted that a presentation on the use of spectral CT to guide lung tumor biopsies will be presented at the upcoming Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) meeting this week in Barcelona, Spain. In the talk, Dr. Filippo Piacentino, an interventional radiologist at the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy, will discuss the use of spectral CT to better guide lung tumor biopsies.
Philips also announced that the University of Leiden in the Netherlands is joining the company's global network of clinical partners investigating the addition of spectral CT to the interventional suite. Other members of the network include Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and Baptist Health's Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute in Miami.
In other news, Philips has begun a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania to investigate spectral CT guidance during interventional procedures, with the goal of confirming the effectiveness of procedures with the patient is still on the table.
