Toshiba displays new, advanced ultrasound systems at ACC annual meeting

Health care facilities use ultrasound as a first-line diagnostic exam to quickly and efficiently perform a range of patient exams, including cardiac imaging. Developed to meet these demanding clinical needs, Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. will showcase the advanced cardiac capabilities of its Aplio^TM MX and Aplio Artida^TM ultrasound systems at this year’s American College of Cardiology (ACC) annual meeting in Atlanta, March 14-16, 2010 (Booth #1944). This is the first appearance of the Aplio MX at ACC.

“Toshiba is dedicated to listening to our customers and developing comprehensive imaging systems offering value while meeting a range of customer needs”

Introduced in November 2009, Toshiba’s new Aplio MX ultrasound system is a mid-sized, cart-based system that improves patient care by offering increased portability and patient access, with the ability to perform premium ultrasound exams using this smaller system. The functional Aplio MX allows physicians to quickly and efficiently perform a range of advanced ultrasound exams, including cardiac, on patients when space is limited, such as in the emergency department, intensive care unit, outside the lab and at the patient’s bedside.

Features of the Aplio MX include:

• Contrast Harmonics to provide the ability to use bubble based contrast agents that help to provide better tissue definition on difficult-to-image patients during echocardiograms.
• Differential Tissue Harmonic Imaging for the better imaging of difficult-to-image patients, like bariatric, without sacrificing resolution to give superior border and tissue definition.
• ApliPure+ to enhance both image clarity and detail definition with real-time compounding technology to simultaneously perform spatial and frequency compounding during transmitting and receiving.
• Advanced Dynamic Flow to provide color Doppler imaging at an unprecedented level and show flow with directional information for even the smallest vessels.
• Tissue Doppler Imaging Quantification (TDIQ) software to perform various analyses by Angle Corrected Displacement and Strain to measure myocardial viability.

Toshiba’s Aplio Artida ultrasound system offers the power of 4D imaging in an everyday clinical setting. Artida offers advanced quantitative analysis tools with the world’s first 3D Wall Motion Tracking. 3D Wall Motion Tracking allows sonographers and physicians to quickly and accurately identify wall motion defects and the timing of cardiac events. This greatly improves the detection of wall motion abnormalities in many cardiac disease states and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT), and helps physicians optimize pacemaker settings.

Using Artida’s real-time, multi-planar reformatting capabilities, physicians can assess global and regional LV function, including volumetric LV ejection fraction. Arbitrary views of the heart, not available in 2D imaging, are also obtained to help with surgical planning. The 3D Wall Motion Tracking features from Toshiba allow the user to obtain angle-independent, global and regional information about myocardial contraction.

“Toshiba is dedicated to listening to our customers and developing comprehensive imaging systems offering value while meeting a range of customer needs,” explained Doug Ryan, vice president, Marketing and Strategic Development, Toshiba. “Toshiba’s Aplio MX and Aplio Artida deliver on this commitment by offering the flexibility to perform a variety of high-end cardiology exams in multiple clinical settings.”