Treatment for over half of cancer patients requires radiation therapy, and that calls for high-quality images to enable providers to pinpoint lesions and preserve healthy images. But while CT scans are considered the gold standard images for effective radiation, they don’t have soft-tissue contrast.
To address that problem, GE Healthcare and Spectronic Medical, an MRI technology producer, recently announced a partnership to make AI-based software that will improve soft tissue differentiation in CT.
“By using an MR image and creating a synthetic CT image, our MRI Planner software is designed to improve accuracy, increasing the precision by which radiotherapy can be delivered to the patient, as well as simplifying the physician’s workflow,” explained Spectronic Medical CEO Carl Siversson. “Our customers say the benefits are enormous – it could increase the chances of successful cancer treatment and minimize the negative side-effects from radiotherapy, which often follow patients throughout their lives.”
The two companies collaborated to create a complete deep learning imaging solution using GE’s AIR Recon DL, a deep learning image reconstruction technology that uses the raw data from the MR scanner while reducing image noise, maximizing image quality and resolution and shortening scan times. The high-quality MR images are then converted into synthetic CT images using Spectronic Medical’s AI-based software to produce images with MR soft tissue details that will help clinicians more accurately target lesions.
“We have found MR imaging in radiation therapy improves the accuracy of our treatment delivery,” said Dr. Adalsteinn Gunnlaugsson, a physician at Skåne University Hospital in Sweden. “With the single sequence approach of the Spectronic MRI Planner software, generated synthetic CT allows us to eliminate conventional CT examination and the need for multimodal image registration. MR only radiation therapy planning with our GE SIGNA Architect MR Radiation Oncology Solution allows us to streamline our clinical workflow and deliver treatment more precisely to our patients.”
AIR Recon DL has already benefited more than half a million patients around the world, said Ben Newton, GM of oncology at GE Healthcare, with clinical users observing sharper and less noisy images and up to a 50% reduction in exam times,. “Now, we are delighted to combine this breakthrough image reconstruction technology with Spectronic’s AI-based software for use in the brain, pelvic, head and neck radiotherapy planning.”
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