TORONTO, MAY 5, 2008 – GE Healthcare today announced it has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the company’s new 3.0T magnetic resonance (MR) scanner, the latest addition to GE’s Signa family of MR systems. The new Signa® MR750 3.0T was introduced at the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine in Toronto, May 3-9.

Equipped with the industry’s most powerful gradients, easy-to-use workflow features and the company’s advanced Thermal Management System, the Signa MR750 delivers up to 60 percent additional anatomical coverage and resolution unit per time. The system also allows for up to five times the imaging performance over previous generations, increasing the freedom for advanced application development, including: a routine liver exam in 15 minutes and a full breast exam in only two sequences.  

“GE is committed to pushing the boundaries for MRI capabilities and we believe this new product will do that now and in the future,” said Jim Davis, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare’s MR business. “We expect this product to be a robust and clinically capable MR system that will simplify MR exams without compromising quality or productivity.”

The Signa MR750 features a newly designed RF Transmit system maximizing performance with a 17 percent gain in scanning efficiency. In addition, the system includes the GE-exclusive Optical RF Technology that adds up to 27 percent higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over conventional, non-optical MR receivers by reducing electrical noise and increasing signal detection.

When combined with GE’s use of high-density surface coils, the optical receive chain is a critical path for ensuring clear signal reception and data analysis. To ensure that the high-density approach will always be maintained, the Signa MR750 3.0T architecture is scalable to 128 channels of simultaneous data acquisition.

Revolutionizing imaging capabilities with new parallel imaging technique

In efforts to improve full-body imaging on 3.0T MR, GE Healthcare’s Signa MR750 features a newly developed parallel imaging technique entitled ARC™, Auto Calibrating Reconstruction for Cartesian imaging.  In addition to reducing specific absorption rate (SAR), the ARC technique also improves body imaging by allowing:

• Auto-calibration that helps avoid collecting external sensitivity map;
• Less sensitive to field-of-view (FOV) positioning with a tight FOV;
• Clinically practical reconstruction times for continuous scanning; and
• Workflow simplification that can be seamlessly integrated into sequences without the need for separate calibration scans.

As a result of this new imaging technique, the MR 750 also features new operational efficient advanced applications, including:

LAVA-IDEALTM
LAVA-IDEAL is a dual-echo acquisition technique that raises the bar on existing sequences to provide consistent, detailed, three-dimensional abdominal images in one breath-hold. By allowing the user to select the output image types-- in-phase, opposed-phase, water and fat-- LAVA-IDEAL has the ability to produce four image contrasts with only one scan.  With this new 3.0T application, clinicians can now conduct a complete liver exam in 15 minutes.

“LAVA-IDEAL is a robust sequence that offers ‘fat only’ and ‘water only’ images in addition to excellent in-phase and opposed-phase images in a single breath-hold. This sequence has quickly become a routine part of all our abdominal sequence protocols at 3.0T,” said Dr. Elmar Merkle, professor of Radiology, Head of Body Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Medical Director of the Center for Advanced Magnetic Resonance Development at Duke University.

VIBRANT-IDEALTM
VIBRANT-IDEAL is a new application that allows for fat-free breast imaging with high spatio-temporal resolution.  This application catches the shortest in- and out-of phase echoes to keep scan times comparable to single echo acquisitions even though twice the amount of data is collected.

VIBRANT-IDEAL optimizes acquisition with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR ) for acquiring high quality water and fat images. This capability lets the user prescribe thinner slices for high spatial resolution imaging.

PROPELLER 2.0(TM)
PROPELLER 2.0 enables strong performance in all neuro  imaging planes with the implementation of the No Phase Wrap (NPW) technique. NPW allows virtually ghost-artifact-free, motion-immune scans in sagittal, coronal, axial and oblique planes. Since this technique effectively deals with the aliasing artifact, PROPELLER 2.0 is now more robust performing small field-of-view (FOV) scans.

Simplification of user interface, patient experience and automated acquisition and processing

Driven by customer demands for improved clinical capabilities, the Signa MR750 has been designed around clinical workflow needs with a strong focus on improving productivity, With that in mind, the system also includes operational efficiencies such as the newly designed detachable patient table and the first ever in-room operator console.

In addition, The Signa MR750 features automated acquisition based on the concept of touch and go protocols. The aspect of the system allows for more focused attention on the patient and consistent protocols and processing across operating technicians.

Together, these features reduce setup time in the scanner room by up to 71 percent and additionally, the newly designed user interface reduces the number of steps by as much as 68 percent.

“MR users told us that they want to be able to provide the most advanced clinical applications to serve their communities, such as a complete liver exam in a 15-minute slot, routine fMRI with shorter paradigms and greater activation and a complete breast exam in only two sequences, but they need to be able to reproduce these exams very quickly and easily – every time,” said David Handler, general manager of global MR marketing. “The Signa MR750 puts the most powerful MR technology at their fingertips to use in a very simple way so they can focus on patients.”