A brand-new 1.5-tesla superconducting scanner will take the spotlight in the MRI section of Hitachi's booth at McCormick Place. The Twinsburg, OH, company will also show enhancements and upgrades for its 0.3-tesla and 0.7-tesla magnets.
The 1.5-tesla Echelon scanner features high-performance gradients rated at a 150 tesla/m/sec slew rate, along with proprietary Hitachi pulse sequences such as driven equilibrium FSE and SARGE steady-state gradient echo, and the RAPID parallel acquisition technique first used on Hitachi's open scanners. New capabilities include time-resolved MR angiography and a radial-type acquisition technique.
Echelon's patient-handling system provides more than 9 ft of travel, multiple coil connection points, an audible gradient-noise reduction technique, and other patient comfort features, according to the company.
Performance upgrades for Hitachi's Altaire 0.7-tesla scanner include a new dual-CPU workstation, RAPID head and body coils, and Ascent 5.0 software, with an optional cardiac imaging capability.
For the Airis Elite 0.3-tesla scanner, Hitachi will highlight new RAPID head, body, and extremity coils. The company will also promote a program that enables owners of older Airis and Airis II scanners to upgrade to the newer platform.
By Brian Casey
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
November 10, 2005
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