MR Software Designed for Improved Cardiac Exam Processing

New cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) software provides intuitive, rapid, semiautomatic analysis of basic cardiac parameters, allowing the user to create a comprehensive cardiac patient report within a streamlined clinical environment.

GE Healthcare’s (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) two new software packages for advanced analysis of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (MR) images are called the CardiacVX and MR VesselIQ Xpress. Both CardiacVX and MR VesselIQ Xpress were featured in the GE Healthcare booth at the annual meeting of the Society for Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) on February 1-2, 2013, in San Francisco, CA, USA.

Cardiac MR can provide a large amount of data about the patient’s cardiac condition such as functional parameters, flow, and infarction. However, extricating this information and presenting it in an integrated fashion to the referring physician can be a time-consuming task for the technologist or clinician performing the study.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 510(k)-cleared CardiacVX runs on GE Healthcare’s Advantage workstation (AW), and provides a range of reproducible tools for rapid reviewing and reporting. CardiacVX performs, for instance, fast left ventricle segmentation and volumetric functional analysis in just two clicks. Additional tools include myocardial infarct evaluation, flow analysis (with Qp/Qs ratio), time-course analysis, iron-overload assessment, patent foramen ovale (PFO) assessment, and one-click customizable reporting macros, all within an intuitive, guided user interface.
“CardiacVX was designed to address the clinical demand for a more automated and user-friendly cardiac postprocessing tool to allow clinicians to quickly and easily arrive at needed diagnostic information,” said Anja Brau, PhD, manager of global cardiac MR applications for GE Healthcare.

Computed tomography (CT) angiography has been widely used for evaluating vascular stenosis or abnormalities, but even more, MR angiography is used because of the absence of radiation and calcium-blooming artifacts. Being able to use similar analysis workflow between CT and MR can greatly improve the clinician’s diagnostic efficiency. MR VesselIQ Xpress, built based on GE Healthcare’s CT VesselIQ Xpress platform, is an enhanced image analysis package for MR angiographic data to effectively analyze selected vessels for stenosis, directional tortuosity, and other vascular disorders. MR VesselIQ Xpress provides sophisticated applications such as automatic vessel tracking with centerline display of any vessel, fast three-dimensional (3D) visualization, and fast access to vessel cross section and profile images.

Moreover, MR VesselIQ Xpress automatically provides size, stenosis, and length measurements of abnormal anatomic structures with two deposited points. Measurement tables and associated images are taken and ready to be included in reports. This software was developed to aid radiologists and other clinicians in the effective assessment of vascular anatomy and disease.

CardiacVX and MR VesselIQ Xpress software packages run on GE’s AW and are compatible with AW releases 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6.

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