China Award Patents for CT Image Compression, Reconstruction

The Chinese Government has granted a medical imaging company its second series of technology patents for medical imaging applications. These new patents come on the heels of the first series of patents that were granted in August 2010 for wireless base station compression.

More specific, China utility model patents were granted by the China State Intellectual Property Office covering the use of compressing and storing X-ray projection data in computed tomography (CT) systems. CT projection data are generated when X-rays are digitized and are transferred, stored, and processed by CT image reconstruction computers. Samplify Systems, Inc.'s (Santa Clara, CA, USA) patented compression technology reduces CT projection data bandwidth and storage requirements by a factor of four.

These patents include an apparatus for compressing projection data in a computed tomography system; edge detection for CT projection data; and an apparatus for compressing and storing projection data in a rotatable part of a CT system.

With the granting of this second series of patents in China, Samplify's Prism CT compression technology is now protected in a market and region that is strategically important for the company. Moreover, Samplify continues to make inroads with the leading medical system companies in China. As important, these original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) continue to leverage China's considerable stimulus funding of US$125 Billion, part of which will be used for the deployment of next-generation CT equipment. Samplify's novel compression technology for medical applications saves, according to the company spokespersons, medical imaging OEMs significant design, development, and manufacturing costs for the transport and storage of CT projection signals from the X-ray detectors on the rotating gantry to the image reconstruction workstation.

According to Al Wegener, Samplify CTO and founder, "Medical equipment OEMs who are developing new, lower-cost CT systems, are challenged to transport and store huge amounts of digital data in real time. Samplify's Prism CT compression technology offers these OEMs an innovative way to reduce these transfer and storage bottlenecks in a cost-effective manner. No other solution can match Samplify's low complexity and low-cost solutions while operating at compression rates greater than 200 Msps.”

Samplify System's Prism CT provide higher signal quality, and lower latency for optimum data transmission in next-generation wireless and medical imaging applications. Prism CT has been proven in the medical literature to provide up to 3:1 compression on X-ray detector data without diagnostic impact to reconstructed image quality. Prism CT is available through Samplify's exclusive hardware partner, Moog Components Group (East Aurora, NY, USA), and is also available as intellectual property for popular field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platforms.

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