A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Confirma (Kirkland, Washington), which focuses on computer-aided detection (CAD) for MRI, reported a three-year agreement with healthcare group purchasing organization Amerinet (St. Louis).

The agreement adds CADstream for MRI to Amerinet's CAD portfolio. Amerinet's national network of companies includes Amerinet Central, Intermountain Health Care and Vector.

Sanmina-SCI (San Jose, California), a contract manufacturer, selected PXI modular instruments and test management software from National Instruments (Austin, Texas) to develop an FDA-approved production tester for testing and calibrating medical devices that measure blood glucose levels.

"The NI test platform delivered the accuracy and flexibility we needed to quickly build a compact test system that exceeds our throughput requirements of testing 83,000 devices per week while maintaining a cycle time of 30 seconds per device, and exceeds our yield requirements with production yields greater than 95%," said Mike Oehrlein, Sanmina-SCI senior staff engineer.

The PXI-based system tests a medical device that measures blood glucose levels by performing measurements of the current and impedance characteristics produced from an electrochemical reaction.

The system calibrates the DC amplifier circuits of the measurement engine and verifies the operation of other critical support circuits contained within the device under test. In addition, the system switches various input loads into the measurement engine to emulate the complex task of simulating the blood response.

In other grants/contracts news:

Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pennsylvania) and Invivo (Pewaukee, Wisconsin), a subsidiary of Intermagnetics General, reported a partnership that will integrate Invivo's CAD system with Siemens' Magnetom MRI systems for advanced breast MRI technology.

DynaCAD is designed to provide radiologists with more detailed information for breast MRI exams to assist doctors in detecting disease earlier and streamline workflow by managing the large volume of images involved in today's studies, the company said.

The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH; all Bethesda, Maryland) have funded three new Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Centers focusing on this group of genetic muscle-wasting diseases.

The late Senator Wellstone was a champion of muscular dystrophy issues in Congress.

IRIS International (Chatsworth, California), a manufacturer of automated IVD urinalysis systems and medical devices used in hospitals, clinics and reference laboratories worldwide, reported that its Sample Processing Division has entered into a three-year supply and distribution agreement with Abbott Molecular, a division of Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Illinois) to supply the StatSpin ThermoBrite slide denaturation/hybridization system for performing fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) procedures.

The programmable system automates the denaturation and hybridization steps in slide-based FISH procedures, and provides walk-away convenience for clinical and research personnel.

Bionomics (Adelaide, Australia) reported that it has licensed two genetic tests for the diagnosis of epilepsy to Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp; Burlington, North Carolina). The tests licensed to LabCorp will assist physicians in distinguishing and properly treating a variety of seizure disorders that occur in infants and young children. Bionomics will receive up-front fees and royalties on the sale of the tests by LabCorp.

The first test is for a condition known as severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy (SMEI), a "catastrophic" epilepsy with a high mortality rate and association with mental retardation.

The second test, called the Benign Familial Seizures Panel, is based on the identification of mutations in three different genes that are associated with seizures.

Fonar (Melville, New York) reported the signing of an agreement with Sony Electronics (Park Ridge, New Jersey) to resell the Sony FilmStation 14" x 17" dry film imager as a "first-ever," exclusive film imager offering to its customers.

Toshiba America Medical Systems (TAMS; Tustin, California), which focuses on ultrasound technology, said it has entered an agreement to provide Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (Baltimore) the Aplio CV ultrasound system for use in a groundbreaking clinical trial.

The Aplio CV, Toshiba's all-digital ultrasound system for advanced cardiac applications is designed to enable clinicians in the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Department of Non-invasive Cardiac Imaging, to conduct a high volume of cardiovascular echocardiography procedures.

The overall objective of the study is to utilize the combination of these modalities to optimize cardiac resynchronization, predict the adequacy of response to therapy and to study the effects of dyssynchrony.

R2 Technology (Sunnyvale, California), which focuses on CAD technology for the earlier detection of breast cancer and other medical conditions, said it has signed a new, three-year agreement with Consorta (Schaumburg, Illinois), a healthcare resource management and group purchasing organization. The dual-source agreement designates R2 as a CAD system provider – offering its ImageChecker mammography and CT Lung CAD products.