A new entry-level CT scanner and upgrades farther up its CT product line were among the highlights at RSNA 2015 for Hitachi Medical Systems America.
At the head of this year's class of RSNA introductions was Supria, a new 16-slice scanner that has the same data reconstruction engine used in Hitachi's more powerful Scenaria line of scanners. Hitachi believes Supria will meet the emerging demand for entry-level scanners resulting from the implementation of the Smart Dose XR-29 radiation dose reporting standard, as many existing installed scanners in the U.S. do not meet the standard.
Supria sports a 48-kW generator and gantry with a 75-cm aperture, 180-cm scan range, and 500-lb table weight. It can be cited in a room as small as 200 sq ft. Supria will carry a list price of about $300,000 and will begin shipping in a few weeks, Hitachi said.
Hitachi's Supria 16-slice CT scanner.Farther up Hitachi's CT product line, the company highlighted updated models in its Scenaria family with the SE edition upgrade, available as Scenaria SE 64 and Scenaria SE 128. The SE systems offer features that provide greater scanning speed and ease of use, as well as data reconstruction of 50 images per second and a more robust table capacity, from 500 lb to 550 lb. Reconstruction of multiplanar reformatted (MPR) images is 40% faster, Hitachi reported, and the systems are also compliant with XR-29.
Hitachi said it is upgrading all of the Scenaria scanners to the SE platform at no charge. It is also providing marketing support to Scenaria sites. The SE platform was cleared in November, and shipments will begin in January.
In MRI, Hitachi touted its newest operating system, Evolution 5. The new OS includes 40 improvements and is being offered as a free upgrade to the company's installed base.
New with the upgrade is an image processing algorithm called Vivid that reduces pickup of redundant noise, as well as an optimized fast spin-echo (FSE) sequence called opFSE that results in better sharpness and clarity. The resulting images have greater uniformity and contrast.
Other new applications include motion compensation for neuro studies, selective saturation for abdominal MR angiography, diffusion with enhanced functional analysis including kurtosis imaging (DKI), liver imaging with iron quantification, and breast imaging with breast spectroscopy for therapy monitoring.
Evolution 5 is currently available for the Echelon Oval 1.5T, with all new scanners running on the software and users in the field being offered upgrades starting in January. It will also ship later in 2016 on Hitachi's other MRI scanners, the Oasis 1.2T open scanner and the Trillium Oval 3T scanner. In other news, U.S. shipments of Trillium Oval 3T are expected to begin in 2016 after the scanner received clearance in March.
In ultrasound, the Hitachi Aloka business demonstrated Aloka Artemis, a system that offers ultrasound-MRI image fusion for targeted prostate biopsy 3D guidance, as well as the Sofia automated breast tomography system. Sofia is currently shipping in the U.S.
