Welcome to In Focus, Calgary Scientific Medical Group's newsletter for the Advanced Visualization community.

We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please direct these to Tom Kunimoto via email or call +1.403.270.7159 extension 320.

We look forward to hearing from you, and please send this link on to colleagues.

In this issue:

• Radiologists tell us what is important in Advanced Visualization
  At the recent ARRS (American Roentgen Ray Society) annual meeting held in Washington, D.C., Calgary Scientific hosted a group of radiologists in a product design and feedback focus group. Read more

• Extending the value of your PACS - recent study reinforces merits of Calcium Scoring
  According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article, the coronary calcium score is a strong predictor of incident coronary heart disease, providing valuable information beyond standard risk factors. The ResolutionMD^TM Calcium Scoring 2.0 SDK enables PACS or other medical systems to rapidly extend the value of your medical system with this valuable tool. Read more

• Medical imaging software veteran to lead product strategy
  Ed Chan has joined the organization as Director of Product Management. Mr. Chan brings several years of experience in the medical imaging software market, most recently he was with McKesson’s Medical Imaging and ALI Technologies. Read more
  

• Ed Chan speaks on the trend for tightly integrated advanced visualization and CSI’s product strategy. Read more

• Calgary Scientific showcased for technology commercialization success
  The Calgary Scientific success story is showcased in a current Alberta government campaign called Bringing Technology to Market. This three year, $178 million program is designed to encourage technology investment in Alberta. Read more

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Radiology focus group at ARRS reviews priorities for Advanced Visualization

Calgary Scientific recently hosted a highly-praised product focus group in conjunction with the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) at their annual meeting in Washington DC. Nine radiologists were provided with Calgary Scientific’s ResolutionMD^TM software and were given specific tasks to simulate a real case and put the software through its paces.

Over the course of the hands-on experience and in a post-session survey, the group was polled for thoughts on a variety of subjects concerning advanced visualization software and the benefits it should deliver. During the hands-on session, the radiologists performed MIP, MPR, thick slabbing and 3D volume rendering, where they provided valuable feedback regarding image quality, ease-of-use, and performance.

The group indicated that the top three challenges facing diagnostic imaging today are declining reimbursement, the increasing workload and staff shortages. They unanimously agreed the chief expectations for advanced visualization tools are around speed and performance, increased workflow efficiency, greater diagnostic capability and accuracy.

The group also emphasized the importance of having advanced visualization tools readily and seamlessly accessible from the existing PACS interface. Participants consistently pointed to the growing importance of being able to quickly and easily share images with other referring physicians and colleagues.

A key take-away from the session for Calgary Scientific was the validation of its commitment to tools for embedding and web-based access to products in the radiologist’s environment to streamline the workflow and enable collaboration.

ResolutionMD was given high marks by the group both for image quality and the product’s extremely flexible toolset. It was noted that even with non-medical quality monitors the images were crisp. The product’s ability to create pre-sets and save various views for future use was very well received by the participants. The lens tool, which permits zooming on particular regions of interest, received praise for being a very unique and useful feature.

“Several participants came up to me and were impressed with Calgary Scientific and their unique approach to building software, saying the session was both very productive and fun,” remarked Kerry Sperry, Director of Communications and Development for the ARRS. All attendees stated that they would like to be invited to future sessions.

Calgary Scientific will be conducting a similar series of product focus groups in 2008 concentrating on our web-based tools and disease-specific applications. Please contact , Director of Marketing, for more information regarding upcoming sessions and to include your end-user radiology clients.

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Increasing the value of your PACS with the addition of Calcium Scoring

According to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the coronary calcium score is a strong predictor of incident heart disease beyond that provided by standard risk factors. Calgary Scientific's ResolutionMD Calcium Scoring 2.0 SDK now enables PACS and other medical imaging systems to quickly and affordably add this valuable tool to their offering.

The highly flexible Calcium Scoring SDK enables seamless integration of the Calcium Scoring protocol directly into the existing interface, providing the same familiar look and feel, and can be fully configured to utilize the same keyboard and mouse navigation controls. Calcium Scoring can truly become a seamless extension to increasing the value of your existing system.

With a single click, the user selects a vessel for study, or clicks and drag selects a region of interest such as shown here, with ResolutionMD Calcium Scoring embedded in ClearCanvas Open Source PACS. ResolutionMD Calcium Scoring provides real-time Agatston and volume calculations per vessel or in aggregate, and prepares a report with the calcium score and benchmark data. In most cases, can be completed in less than two minutes.

With ResolutionMD Calcium Scoring, an efficient workflow might see a technologist score the images and save the report immediately into the PACS. There, the radiologist can review and sign off, making the report readily available to the referring physician. It can easily be printed out for consultation and provided for the patient's personal records.

“Speed, simplicity, image quality – the user experience is excellent. I am very excited to have this level of performance and utility available on my regular computer,” said Dr. Naeem Merchant, Cardiac Radiologist at Toronto General Hospital.

For more information or to request a demo of Calcium Scoring or ResolutionMD MIP/MPR, Slabbing and Volume rendering tools embedded in a PACS environment, click here.

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From the start, Calgary Scientific impressed me as an innovative company in Advanced Visualization. I had noticed it at an event in 2006 and was intrigued by what I saw. Since then I saw that PACS OEM partners were integrating and promoting its products. This indicated to me that the company must have great offerings, a highly productive development process, and strong management that was leveraging the IP that it owned. What I also came to realize is behind the company's innovative approach were very experienced personnel who are focused on delivering highly useful products via strong partnerships and distribution channels. All this pointed to a company that has enormous potential.

What makes your job as the head of Product Management here particularly exciting?

With the initial PACS market place plateauing and the market being more about replacement or upgrades, PACS with highly integrated Advanced Visualization will be a key differentiator and represents the next large growth opportunity. The fact that the company is solely dedicated to Advanced Visualization is a huge plus. This focus enables the company to commit to R&D and invest in innovative IP technologies that address the most frequently occurring and fastest growing diseases. Also, the development infrastructure here is premised on rapid and accurate turnaround. Being the right size to permit agility and responsiveness is clearly what this market requires right now.

How do you see the relationship between PACS and Advanced Visualization progressing, and how is Calgary Scientific addressing this?

It is clear that a highly integrated, embedded application provides greater efficiency and ease-of- use. This is critical for practitioners, as they want the same interface and navigation so they don't have to spend time learning a new system. The Advanced Visualization functions then become a seamless extension of the PACS workflow. With our ResolutionMD Software Development Toolkit (SDK), Calgary Scientific provides the means for seamless and deep integration in the PACS environment.

Tell us a little bit about what you have planned for the products in your pipeline.

For general radiology we are specifically addressing the workflow to improve efficiency and accuracy while performing the most frequent tasks. This includes MIP/mIP, MPR, thick slabbing, volume rendering, and automating image preparation tasks like bone removal and vessel segmentation. Also, we are very focused on developing disease specific applications related to specific anatomies and physiologies, namely cardiology, oncology, and neurology. These are some of the fastest growing disease areas and present great opportunities for lower risk, non-invasive diagnosis and treatment. Recognizing the growing demand for the delivery of these applications "anytime, anywhere", we are making them all web-based.

What trends are you are watching that are influencing your direction, and how is the technology keeping pace?

Physicians outside of radiology are requesting more information for both collaborating with others and communicating with their patients. Calgary Scientific will continue leveraging web-based technologies to improve image access and permit efficient, cost- effective analyses via a secure internet connection. This in turn will drive the use of imaging throughout the enterprise. More importantly, increased accessibility and smarter tools will mean more efficient use of the practitioner’s time. For instance, surgeons are telling us how volume rendering is improving the use of their time previously spent drawing pictures of the planning and surgery for their patients. It’s also clear that more sophisticated computer assisted diagnostic applications are needed due to the dramatic increase in the number of procedures for imaging applications. Just as we have seen the explosion in mammography, once Medicare approves reimbursement for screening procedures like virtual colonoscopies, we will likely see tremendous growth in the number of these procedures.

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