At the SNMMI annual meeting, new research was presented alongside the state-of-the-art modalities that the research was conducted on, and GE Healthcare's portfolio was among them.

The new GE Discovery MI and Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT systems — both showcased — are designed to help clinicians guide treatment, support patients with sensitive care and create an environment for compelling research. Both systems feature cutting-edge digital detectors that represent the next generation of molecular imaging systems.

“Clinicians can complete multiple scans in a single visit and reduce the injected dose or the scan time by 50 percent to improve patient experience,” Nathan Hermony, GE Healthcare's general manager for nuclear medicine told HCB News. “Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT is the world’s first general purpose SPECT/CT imaging system. This enables direct conversion of photons into a digital signal that eliminates the signal loss and noise inherent in conventional SPECT/CT detection technology.”
The technology is targeted at academic medical centers to allow increased referral testing capacity and to promote research. According to Hermony, the reduced scan time and dose exposure also make the scanner ideal for younger patients.

“Discovery NM/CT 670 CZT was engineered to deliver improvements in lesion detection, image quality and patient comfort, and combined with advanced quantitative applications provided through Xeleris 4.0, the new nuclear medicine workstation, it can help clinicians better diagnose and monitor diseases earlier,” Hermony explained.

It also provides physicians with organ- and system-specific diagnosis, including brain and lungs.

Researchers have identified clinical scenarios where the combination of multiple SPECT tracers could aid physicians in diagnosing and creating more specific reports in difficult patient conditions, and GE Healthcare believes the NM/CT 670 CZT addresses that need.

A second GE announcement at SNMMI highlighted the Discovery MI system, which is nearing completion of the FDA review process.

“With this new detector, the system delivers up to two times improvement in volumetric resolution, enabling small lesion detectability, and has the highest NEMA sensitivity of any TOF/PET system in the industry,” Bich Le, GE Healthcare's general manager of PET/CT, told HCB News.

She said that the combination of sensitivity and volumetric resolution are key enablers to detect small lesions, resulting in earlier diagnosis for patients.

“You can apply these counts toward faster scans and throughput, lower dose, especially with low yield tracers,” she said, adding that “sensitivity is currency” in treating patients.

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