Aug 23 2010
Samplify Systems, Inc., a leading provider of signal-compression technology, semiconductors, and solutions, today announced that the Chinese Government has granted the company its second series of technology patents for medical imaging applications. These new patents come on the heels of the first series of patents that were granted earlier this month for wireless base station compression. More specific, China utility model patents were granted by the China State Intellectual Property Office covering the use of compressing and storing x-ray projection data in Computed Tomography (CT) systems. CT projection data is generated when x-rays are digitized and are transferred, stored, and processed by CT image reconstruction computers. Samplify's patented compression technology reduces CT projection data bandwidth and storage requirements by a factor of four. These patents include:
With the granting of this second series of patents in China, Samplify's Prism CT compression technology is now protected in a market and region that is strategically important for the company. Indeed, Samplify continues to make inroads with the leading medical system companies in China. As important, these OEMs continue to leverage China's significant stimulus funding of $125B, part of which will be used for the deployment of next-generation CT equipment. Samplify's innovative compression technology for medical applications saves medical imaging OEMs significant design, development, and manufacturing costs for the transport and storage of CT projection signals from the x-ray detectors on the rotating gantry to the image reconstruction workstation.
According to Al Wegener, Samplify CTO and founder, "Medical equipment OEMs who are developing new, lower-cost CT systems, are challenged to transport and store huge amounts of digital data in real time. Samplify's Prism CT compression technology offers these OEMs an innovative way to reduce these transfer and storage bottlenecks in a cost-effective manner. No other solution can match Samplify's low complexity and low-cost solutions while operating at compression rates greater than 200 Msps."
"Today's announcement is another example of the Chinese government's willingness to open up its markets to foreign corporations in an effort to gain access to the best technologies and intellectual property for its own corporate base," says Tom Sparkman, Samplify CEO. "We are very pleased," he added, "that we are able to make inroads with Chinese OEMs using our technology in such a protected fashion."