Newswatch: February 2006

Industry Partnerships

Agfa and Siemens Medical

Agfa Corp (Ridgefield Park, NJ) and Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pa) announced today that they have signed a bilateral agreement in the field of DR. First, Agfa will globally distribute Siemens Medical's Mammomat Novation digital mammography system on a nonexclusive basis. Second, Agfa will source other components from Siemens Medical to support the development of its DR portfolio. Finally, Siemens Medical will further expand its offering of Agfa's CR systems complementing existing agreements with Agfa.

AMIRSYS and Sectra

AMIRSYS (Salt Lake City) has integrated its STATdx system with Sectra PACS (Linköping, Sweden) to provide diagnostic clinical decision support to radiologists and other physicians at the point of care. This integration now enables a user to automatically obtain diagnostic information while at the PACS workstation. The integration automatically detects the anatomical region of the study and launches STATdx to the appropriate anatomical region for quick reference to confirm difficult diagnoses. More than 750 installations around the world use Sectra PACS.

Barco and NeuroLogica

Barco (Duluth, Ga) has been chosen by NeuroLogica Corp (Danvers, Mass) to develop high-quality 3-D–rendering software for its innovative CereTom mobile CT scanner console and associated Clarus workstation. Based on its Voxar 3D visualization and analysis software, Barco has provided NeuroLogica with a custom package that will allow CereTom users to see and manipulate 3-D views of the brain in an efficient and intuitive way.

Cedara and Kodak

Cedara Software (Mississauga, Ontaria), a Merge Healthcare company, has signed an agreement with Eastman Kodak Co (Rochester, NY) to bring the world's first CAD system for breast ultrasound to healthcare providers. Under the agreement, Kodak will distribute Cedara B-CAD to its customers as part of an integrated solution with their Kodak CareStream Mammography Workstation.

CompuMed and Fuji

CompuMed Inc (Los Angeles) and FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA Inc (FMSU of Stamford, Conn) have announced a 5-year licensing agreement that enables FMSU to integrate CompuMed's proprietary OsteoGram osteoporosis screening software with its current CR systems and future CR mammography systems. Under the terms of the agreement, FMSU will place an initial order for 10 OsteoGram systems, and then license and distribute the OsteoGram on existing and new CR systems, as well as future CR mammography platforms, in the United States.

Data Distributing with Breece Hill, RADInfo Systems, and XenData

Data Distributing LLC (Laguna Hills, Calif) has announced a new digital archive image management solution that combines the iStoRA appliance from Breece Hill (Louisville, Colo), the Archive Series software from XenData (Walnut Creek, Calif), and DICOM-compliant software from RADInfo Systems (Dulles, Va). The DICOM Archive System provides a reliable and cost-efficient DICOM management system for the automation of routing, storing, retrieving, archiving, and managing medical images and related patient data.

EMC and Siemens Medical

EMC Corp (Hopkinton, Mass) and Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pa) have announced an alliance that enables Siemens to offer the full range of EMC network storage systems to the healthcare market. To help healthcare providers store, manage, and protect the increasing volume and complexity of patient information and clinical images, Siemens Medical will offer EMC Symmetrix, CLARiiON, and Centera networked storage systems with its Soarian HIS and syngo RIS and PACS offerings.

eRAD and Barco

eRAD (Greenville, SC) has announced that eRAD PACS solutions will be offered with a choice of 3-D capabilities. In addition to the current Web-enabled 3-D offering, eRAD PACS can now be configured with the Voxar 3D software from Barco (Duluth, Ga). A plug-in module, eRAD 3-D provides support for creating and viewing 3-D objects. Licenses for eRAD 3-D allow an unlimited number of users to work from an unlimited number of locations via the Internet.

Island Corp and ACUO

Island Corp (Concord, Ontario) has selected Acuo DICOM-Assisted Migration (ADAM) software from Acuo Technologies (St Paul, Minn) for its data-migration services. ADAM software is a DICOM tool used in conjunction with AcuoMed Image Manager to migrate DICOM image data from one DICOM archive to another. ADAM provides accurate rapid transfer of data from one archival storage system to another and from legacy PACS to new systems.

NAI Tech with SonoCiné

NAI Tech Products (Auburn, Calif) and SonoCiné Inc (Pasadena, Calif) have entered into a collaborative partnership in the development of a new ultrasound breast-cancer detection system. The agreement calls for the ultrasound probe positioning system, precision control and guidance components, and ultrasound system interface, the latter of which includes video image acquisition and pre-processing. NAI Tech will manufacture several systems to support SonoCiné's current FDA clinical study and supply future manufacturing services at the conclusion of the study and FDA clearance of the device.

Nucletron and Siemens Medical

Nucletron BV (Veenendaal, The Netherlands) and Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, Pa) have announced a worldwide distribution agreement for Nucletron's Oncentra MasterPlan software. This agreement will provide Siemens Medical's customers with access to Nucletron's treatment-planning solution directly through Siemens Medical's sales organization.

QStar and EMC

QStar Technologies Inc (Fort Walton Beach, Fla) has completed the integration between the QStar Data Director and the QStar Simulated Disk or Tape Jukebox products with Centera content addressed storage from EMC Corp (Hopkinton, Mass). Centera is a secure repository for information archiving that addresses the unique storage requirements of medical-imaging's digital assets.

QStar and RADinfo Systems

QStar Technologies Inc (Fort Walton Beach, Fla) has announced a partnership with RADinfo Systems (Dulles, Va) for a combined use of RADinfo's filmless digital-imaging solutions with the archive management software from QStar.

Quest and NEC

Quest International Inc (Irvine, Calif) has announced the immediate availability of a new line of large-screen LCDs from NEC Display Solutions of America Inc (Itasca, Ill). This new series of LCDs includes the 32-inch MultiSync LCD3210, the 40-inch MultiSync LCD4010, and the 46-inch MultiSync LCD4610, the latter of which is the largest LCD information display available on the market. As part of the offering, Quest pairs NEC large-screen displays with liquid-resistant, stainless-steel enclosures and mobile-display carts.

Unfors Instruments and Philips Medical

Unfors Instruments (New Milford, Conn) have signed a 3-year worldwide contract to supply the field service engineers, factories, and R&D departments of Philips Medical Systems (Bothell, Wash) with the new Unfors Xi QA device. The companies hope to equip all users of X-ray QA devices within Philips Medical with Unfors Xi kVp-dosimeters.