(Booth 3429) Toshiba of Tustin, CA, will highlight several new ultrasound technologies, including MicroPure for breast imaging, spatiotemporal image correlation (STIC) for assessing the fetal heart, and a work-in-progress elastography technique.
STIC is a gating technique used in fetal cardiac studies. An automatic volume acquisition captures a high number of 2D frames in a volume set, which is then displayed in a cine loop. Because there is 3D information behind each frame, scan planes can be moved, rotated, and manipulated. Using these techniques, plus a cavity mode that detects hollow structures, the feature may be useful in detecting congenital anomalies of the heart, according to the company. It has been cleared by the FDA and is currently available globally.
Toshiba also will demonstrate as a work-in-progress an elastography technique designed to detect tumors based on their level of stiffness, with the clinical expectation that cancerous tumors tend to be much stiffer than normal tissue. This feature is pending FDA clearance but is available in the rest of the world.
