PALO ALTO, Calif., June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Varian Medical Systems, Inc., (NYSE: VAR - News) today announced it has acquired the assets of Houston-based IKOEmed and IKOEtech, privately-owned suppliers of software used in the planning of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments. The acquisition enables Varian to offer hospitals and clinics an additional software tool to automate and accelerate the most time-consuming portion of the treatment planning process. Varian is paying approximately $2.2 million plus an additional amount based on achievement of specified milestones to acquire the IKOE assets.

The software is designed to achieve greater than 50 percent reduction in the contouring portion of the radiotherapy treatment planning process, which typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours. It automates the contouring process by matching patient images with pre-contoured images from an expert database created by renowned radiation oncologists. This eliminates the need for clinicians to manually outline between 10 and 20 organs in each of anywhere from 100 to 200 images of a patient's disease site.

"This is another important step in our ongoing initiative to make cancer treatments better, faster, easier, and more cost effective," said Tim Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems. "This new tool should save a lot of time in planning for complex cases, particularly in cancers of the head and neck and lymph systems." The IKOE software, which has FDA 510(k) clearance, complements Varian's existing segmentation tools currently used to automate planning for prostate, breast, and lung treatments.

Varian will sell the software initially in the U.S. as a standalone product that will work with most radiotherapy treatment planning software products in the industry. The company plans to integrate it with its global market leading Eclipse(TM) treatment planning software for radiotherapy, radiosurgery, and brachytherapy.

Varian anticipates the acquisition be neutral to earnings for the company in the current fiscal year and accretive thereafter. "We expect that our worldwide sales, service, and support network will contribute to faster and deeper market penetration for these software products," Guertin said. The IKOE software is now installed in about 20 sites, primarily in the U.S.

Four IKOE employees and consultants are being offered jobs with Varian to support the product at Varian facilities in the U.S.

Varian Medical Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, California, is the world's leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for treating cancer and other medical conditions with radiotherapy, radiosurgery, proton therapy, and brachytherapy. The company supplies informatics software for managing comprehensive cancer clinics, radiotherapy centers and medical oncology practices. Varian is a premier supplier of tubes and digital detectors for X-ray imaging in medical, scientific, and industrial applications and also supplies X-ray imaging products for cargo screening and industrial inspection. Varian Medical Systems employs approximately 5,100 people who are located at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe, and China and approximately 79 sales and support offices around the world. For more information, visit http://www.varian.com.

Forward Looking Statements:

Except for historical information, this news release contains "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements concerning industry and market outlook, including customer demand and acceptance of products or technology for radiotherapy and radiosurgery; the outlook for certain geographic regions and markets; growth drivers; and the outlook for Varian's our orders, sales, backlog, or earnings growth; future financial results and any statements using the terms "will," "expect," "anticipates," "enable," "should," "plans," or similar statements are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include the ability to effectively integrate the software of IKOEmed and IKOEtech into Varian product offerings and sales and marketing operations, the ability to retain the services of key IKOE personnel; demand for our and IKOE's products; our ability to develop and commercialize new products; the impact of competitive products and pricing; our ability to maintain or increase operating margins; our ability to protect our intellectual property; the risk of operations interruptions due to events beyond our control; and the other risks listed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements in this release because of new information, future events, or otherwise.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: Varian Medical Systems Spencer Sias, (650) 424-5782