Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : IMAT - ultrafast tomography for coronary artery disease -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CAP who wrote (2976)	3/26/1999 9:03:00 PM
From: Angel Medina	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3725

Bruce: The end of imatron in near. Read this: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New technology lets CT machines check for early heart disease March 26, 1999 Web posted at: 3:17 PM EST (2017 GMT) ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- Ordinary hospital CT scanners can be equipped to snap stop-action pictures of the heart, offering a new way of detecting dangerously clogged arteries many years before they cause trouble. Fatty buildups in the heart's arteries begin in early adulthood, but often there is no sign of damage until a heart attack strikes in middle age or beyond. However, these deposits frequently contain calcium that shows up on CT scans. In recent years, super-fast CT scanners have been introduced to take freeze-frame cross-sectional X-rays of the beating heart. On these pictures, fatty deposits show up as white lumps of calcium. These specialized machines, called electron beam CT scanners, cost about $2 million, and about 50 are installed in hospitals and imaging centers across the United States. Now, researchers say they have figured out a way to rig up the much more common CT scanners found in virtually every hospital so they will do the same thing. The idea, which involves combining a CT scanner with an EKG machine, was developed by Dr. Christopher Woodhouse of Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach. The technology was further advanced by Dr. Jeffrey Carr and others from Wake Forest University, who presented their findings Friday at a medical conference in Orlando sponsored by the American Heart Association. Carr compared ordinary CT with electron beam CT in 36 patients. He found their power to detect calcium in the heart's coronary arteries was virtually identical. "This should make a difference" by allowing calcium scanning to become much more routinely available, said Dr. Peter Wilson of the long-running Framingham Heart Study in Framingham, Massachusetts. During every beat, the heart contracts and squirts blood through the arteries. Then it rests and refills before contracting again. Super-fast CTs are synchronized with the heart so they take an X-ray during the resting stage of every other beat. About 10,000 ordinary CT machines are installed in hospitals across the country, and they shoot pictures more slowly. These machines are used to look at the liver, lungs and virtually every other part of the body. Carr's group hooked patients up to electrocardiogram machines while they underwent CT scans of their hearts. The machine shoots a continuous stream of pictures, snapping 400 overlapping images in 35 seconds. This creates a sort of X-ray movie of the heart. Afterward, a computer reads the EKG information to select the pictures taken during the resting stage, when the heart is still, so doctors can look for traces of calcium. In the examples shown by Carr, calcium stood out even more clearly in the ordinary CT scanners' pictures than it did in those shot with the super-fast scanners. "This is an important breakthrough, but we still need to know more" about how the scans compare with those taken with the super-fast machines, said Dr. Ronald M. Lauer of the University of Iowa. Super-fast scans typically cost between $200 and $400. Whether ordinary CTs will make this any cheaper is unclear. However, Carr said the new approach should make calcium scanning much more available. "With this technology, we will be able to finally do population-wide screening," offering CT scans routinely to people suspected of being at high risk of heart disease, he said. Many doctors believe that screening this way can find heart trouble in time to do something about it. People who have calcium buildups might be put on cholesterol-lowering drugs at an early age or persuaded to lower their blood pressure or quit smoking. Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material ma