SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - April 07, 2009) - TeraRecon, Inc. (www.terarecon.com), a leader in advanced visualization and decision support solutions for medical imaging, today announced that it will showcase the newly released Aquarius iNtuitionTM (“AQi”) software version 4.4 at the 2009 annual conference and exhibition of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois on April 4-8, 2009.
HIMSS is focused on medical informatics and the application of information technology (IT) to healthcare. Some of the most advanced IT being applied to modern healthcare relates the visualization, management and processing of data acquired from various scanning modalities such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR). Such data contain a wealth of diagnostic information that can also be used for the staging of disease, and planning or follow-up of therapy. However, modern modalities obtain such voluminous amounts of data that interpretation of the raw data by a physician alone may not obtain the maximum benefit of the imaging examination. Hence, TeraRecon has developed solutions to visualize and automatically analyze such data and provide rich decision-support tools for interpreting physicians. TeraRecon is a leading provider of such solutions, in the form of the Aquarius iNtuition suite of client-server enterprise advanced visualization software.
Aquarius iNtuition features technology to automatically pre-process volumetric scans from CT, MR and other modalities, immediately upon acquisition. Scans can be automatically filtered to highlight the locations of objects of a certain shape, which may help physicians to more quickly identify lesions such as lung nodules or colon polyps. Once such a finding has been identified, Aquarius iNtuition offers tools to quantify the size of the finding, and to track its progression over time. Similarly, Aquarius iNtuition will automatically analyze acquired scan data to identify the type of scan, and the location of certain anatomical features, such as the heart, the main chambers of the heart, and even the coronary arteries providing blood supply to the heart muscle. Such automated anatomy labeling enables Aquarius iNtuition to deliver clinical workflow protocols that are driven by the systems’ prior knowledge of the anatomy. Aquarius iNtuition provides a comprehensive suite of such analysis protocols and an application framework upon which research for new techniques can be developed. As new automated algorithms are developed, they can even be re-applied to historical imaging data to extract even more latent information, to facilitate physicians’ pro-active preventive care strategies.
TeraRecon president and CEO Robert Taylor, Ph.D said, “The future of medicine will surely involve extensive reliance on advanced decision support technology to enable speedier, more accurate, and more cost-effective patient management. The technology that TeraRecon has developed and continues to develop makes it possible to manage a presenting patient through prompt and accurate diagnosis, to therapy planning and follow-up, with the benefit of our advanced image processing technology, which can offer an ever-increasing level of base confidence to an attending physician. We believe this will ultimately translate to more effective patient care at a lower cost, which is a clear imperative for providers of medicine today.”
In addition to such automated visualization and decision support technology, Aquarius iNtuition also features a system architecture designed to scale from a small imaging operation to a large multi-site enterprise. iNtuition technology is client-server in nature, meaning that the clinical interface can be deployed to any enterprise PC and readily integrated with other healthcare information systems. Yet, the power of the Aquarius server enables capabilities that would previously only have been available on a dedicated, expensive standalone workstation that does not integrate well with medical informatics workflow at all.
Aquarius iNtuition offers advanced, sophisticated client software, the “AQi Client,” for use by expert interpreting physicians, and a simple, browser-based client “AquariusWEB” which can be launched from a link in an e-mail, or embedded in an Electronic Medical Record or report, without requiring any ActiveX control or similar browser plug-in technology. As an example, real-time, live 3D image review on an iPhone is made possible by the AquariusWEB solution.
The iNtuition solution includes an Enterprise-class server-side architecture with scalable components taking care of image routing, storage, pre-processing and live 3D rendering, with support for redundancy and interoperability with other healthcare information systems.
The solution is offered under the flexible iNtuition UNLIMITED purchasing program, whereby an unlimited software license may be purchased to support a given number of concurrent users, a given annual volume of studies, or a given capacity of data at any one time. The solution may be acquired as a capital purchase, or on a rental / subscription basis as an operational expense. Unlimited hardware can be deployed by a customer at multiple locations to manage virtually any enterprise structure, with unlimited software instances available under the iNtuition UNLIMITED program, providing the contracted limits of users, studies or data are observed at any given time.
Dr Taylor continued: “iNtuition is an enterprise-class solution offered under an enterprise-friendly purchasing program, iNtuition UNLIMITED. We are convinced that within a short period of time, such advanced decision support and visualization will become the standard of care and an integral part of all enterprise health information management systems, with concomitant improvements in the quality, cost and efficiency of care. TeraRecon is committed to furthering this goal as rapidly as possible.”
About TeraRecon, Inc. (www.terarecon.com)
TeraRecon Inc., a leader in advanced image processing and 3D visualization techniques, provides advanced imaging systems for medical and other visualization applications based on its unique and patented image processing technologies. A four-time winner of Frost and Sullivan awards, the company has developed a leading portfolio of products that advance the performance, quality, functionality, and integration of image processing and 3D visualization systems. Founded in 1997, TeraRecon has developed a unique family of powerful processors that are used in its real-time, enterprise-wide image processing solutions. TeraRecon is a privately held company with headquarters in San Mateo, CA, European headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, and branch offices in Concord, MA; Tokyo, Japan and Osaka, Japan.
