Acoustic Lung Imaging System Developed for Bedside Applications

A partnership between two international medical companies has resulted in the design of a noninvasive and radiation-free lung imaging system developed to display comprehensive information during the respiratory process on ventilated patients. The system records lung sounds by utilizing acoustic sensors brought in contact with the patients' back while lying in bed.

GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) in partnership with Deep Breeze, Ltd. (Or-Akiva Israel), developer of vibration response imaging (VRI) technology have announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted 510(k) marketing clearance for the VRIxv, a non-invasive, radiation-free lung imaging system.

The system's advanced software converts signals into dynamic images of the lungs with regional distribution maps, numerical representation, and breathing graphs. Each recording samples 20 seconds of lung sounds, typically covering several breath cycles. Moreover, monitoring capabilities are enhanced by the synchronization of the VRIxv image and vibration energy graph with the pressure and flow waveforms sampled from the patient's ventilator. This synchronization helps to assess the recorded image rapidly and objectively.

"GE Healthcare is helping to facilitate the next era in patient care by providing to the clinical community not only a wide range of ventilation solutions, but also advanced respiratory monitoring tools--such as the VRIxv, which provides a clinician with a window into what is happening inside the lungs in real time,” said Pam Hall, general manager for the critical care segment of the respiratory and sleep business at GE Healthcare. "Our goal is to help clinicians efficiently monitor their patients' respiratory conditions and help clinicians tailor therapy to improve the outlook for every respiratory patient.”

"The availability of the VRIxv device in the U.S. will allow the critical care community to effectively record and monitor the overall and regional distribution of lung sounds during the respiratory process,” said Dr. R. Phillip Dellinger, professor of medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (New Brunswick, NJ, USA). "The VRIxv provides the physician with measurements that reveal changes in lung sounds, including changes due to therapeutic treatment, changes due to ventilator settings, or changes due to the clinical conditions in mechanically ventilated patients.”

"The FDA clearance of VRIxv advances our efforts to create a new clinical paradigm in which our VRI technology will be the standard application in a broad line of clinical applications, such as monitoring the impact of ventilator settings or managing risk associated with mechanically ventilated patients.” said Dr. Miki Nagler, CEO, Deep Breeze.

GE Healthcare's range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurologic diseases, and other conditions earlier. The company's vision for the future is to enable a new "early health” model of care, focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection, and disease prevention.

Deep Breeze is a medical device company that has developed a variety of products based on its innovative VRI technology. These products have been cleared for commercialization in the United States, Europe, China, Korea, and Israel. In partnership with GE Healthcare, Deep Breeze introduced its critical care device in Europe in October 2007.

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