The European Society of Cardiology’s (ESC) annual 5 day conference is in full swing in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 30,000 participants, including this Medgadget editor, are participating, gathering together to share the newest advances in cardiology. An exhibition area of 20,000 square meters is open to show off all new technology in patient monitoring, interventional cardiology and imaging. This year the spotlight is on “The heart interacting with systemic organs.” Many tech companies in the exhibition area have their focus on new algorithms for interpretation of imaging results.
One of these companies, Philips, is presenting a new ultrasound platform, the EPIQ, with integrated anatomical intelligence. This system provides an integrated 3D ultrasound technique that helps clinicians to interpret and quantify anatomies of interest, plan procedures and perform minimally-invasive interventions.
A database containing anatomical models assists the clinician with an easy to interpret result and whole-organ 3D visualization. Philips calls it ‘Anatomical Intelligence’, and uses a model of an organ, such as the heart. Anatomical Intelligence helps clinicians perform typical and advanced tasks, such as alignment, segmenting, visualizing, and quantifying.
BIOTRONIK is celebrating its 50th anniversary and is showing off the evolution of pacemakers through the years in their booth.
One of the highlights for BIOTRONIK during the conference is the presentation of the results of the IN-TIME study which demonstrated a reduction in mortality in patients with the company’s Home Monitoring system. The home monitoring system detects changes in the patients’ clinical status and automatically transmits data to clinicians. Early detection of these events, like asymptomatic atrial fibrillation, enables physicians to adapt the therapy in an early stage.
A pacemaker or implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is no longer a contraindication to undergo MR imaging. The reduction of ferromagnetic components makes it possible for patients to safely undergo MRI scans. The Lumax 7 series are the first ICD and cardio resynchronisation therapy (CRT) devices approved for MR scanning with only a small exclusion zone around the device. Since August 2013, the Evia, Entovis, Estella and Ecuro series in combination with the Safio lead, have been approved in Europe for full body MRI without any exclusion zone.
Conference website: ESC 2013…
Press releases: Philips showcases innovations in cardiology at European Society of Cardiology Congress 2013
BIOTRONIK ProMRI series: press release
