A Medical Device Daily

Guardian Technologies International (Herndon, Virginia), a provider of security and healthcare solutions based on Intelligent Imaging Informatics (3i), reported entering in an agreement with Dr. H.K. (Bernie) Huang of the Medical Imaging and Informatics Laboratory at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (Los Angeles).

Huang will lead a multiple-phase process to evaluate and provide feedback on enhancements to Guardian's 3i intelligent imaging analysis solutions as applied to radiology imaging. Guardian said it expects that many of the core features and capabilities deployed for its security products can be utilized for clinical radiology applications.

“3i is very effective at segmenting, clarifying, distinguishing, and identifying organic objects, even when they are masked by one or more other objects of similar density and chemical composition. As with explosives, the human body is made of organic compounds. Therefore, it is a natural extension of the technology to adapt the scientific principles employed for explosives detection to medical image analysis,“ said Richard Borrelli, Guardian's vice president of business development-healthcare.

He added, “Our product development direction will be focused on the areas of greatest clinical need, finding the best pairing of our 3i-based computer-aided detection technologies with the major challenges in clinical imaging.“

Huang, professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at USC, said, “Based on their complex nature and the challenges inherent in imaging and interpretation, we have selected for evaluation what we believe are the three key clinical areas – breast, lungs, and brain. Bringing a technological capability, such as 3i, to these critical challenges will produce major benefits for improved detection and better patient outcomes.“

Mammography is a diagnostic challenge due to overlapping layers of soft tissues of various densities, tending to attenuate contrast and conspicuity between normal tissue and cancerous lesions.

Guardian said that its “iterative transformational divergence technology should bring different perspectives in improving breast cancer early detection and diagnosis.“

Chest exams represent 70% of all diagnostic imaging procedures, but image interpretation of this common study is complicated by overlapping chest structures. Since the chest X-ray is a 2-D representation of a 3-D object, multiple organs will appear to occupy the same space and obscure 3-D anatomical structures.

In other agreements:

• LXU Healthcare (West Boylston, Massachusetts) reported that it has been appointed exclusive sales and marketing partner for Sicel Technologies (Raleigh, North Carolina) in select U.S. markets for DVS, an implantable radiation sensor used in treating breast and prostate cancer.

DVS is the first permanently implantable, wireless, telemetric, radiation sensor for human use to be commercially available in the U.S., the company said. Sicel's miniature DVS sensor (20 mm x 2 mm) provides the capability not only to provide target localization during a patient's treatment cycle but also to measure the actual dose of radiation delivered the tumor site and surrounding normal tissue.

• WellPoint (Indianapolis) reported that it would begin using information collected by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS; Chicago) as a vehicle to help physicians advance cardiac surgery outcomes for WellPoint members – and all patients – undergoing cardiac surgical procedures.

STS is providing WellPoint, which describes itself as the nation's largest health plan, with performance information from hospitals and medical groups that have agreed to share their data from the society's database of outcomes measures for cardiothoracic surgeries.

WellPoint said the collaboration marks the first time STS will provide a health plan with performance information about hospitals and surgery groups, based on outcomes measures from its National Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. This database includes process and outcomes information from more than 700 participants on more than 3 million cardiac procedures.