The global interventional X-ray market is expected to surpass $3 billion by 2021, according to a new Frost & Sullivan report.

An increasing number of low-volume community hospitals, secondary care, rural areas, imaging centers and private practices are adopting IXR systems.

"New high-end surgical and mobile C-arms map the unmet needs for low and mid-scale hospitals by providing high-end interventional systems at an affordable price range and for extended surgical, ortho and cardiac applications, which was not possible before," Srikanth Kompalli, transformational health industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan, told HCB News.

The use of rotational angiography has become a staple in today's high-end surgical C-arm and angiography systems, which provide better navigation assistance as well. The technology's real-time, 3-D reconstruction and CT- and MR-like imaging tools help provide better visualization and enhance clinical diagnosis for certain applications.

According to the report, system replacements, interest in multi-functional applications in hospital segments and a shift from interventional applications to comprehensive image-guided therapy portfolios are also fueling the market. From 2016 to 2021, it's projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 3.5 percent.

"The surgical market starts to move more decisively into minimally-invasive surgery, making [it] ever-more dependent on high-quality, real-time imaging," said Kompalli. "Image-guided therapy is now becoming a prime area for multi-modality convergence."

He added that it could involve any vendor vested in ultrasound, CT, cone-beam CT, MR and fluoroscopy, all of which are being applied as image guidance techniques for therapeutic modalities.

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