Toshiba one-ups Philips with AquilionONE CT scanner

Philips' Brilliance iCT sure had a nice run, but no sooner than it hit the spotlight, Toshiba has arrived fashionably late to steal a little thunder. The outfit's $2.5 million AquilionONE outdoes Philips' iteration by doing 320-slices instead of "just" 256, enabling doctors to see the entire heart while making patients hold their breath for merely "a second or two." Put simply, the machine should allow for heart disease to be spotted in its earliest stages without putting individuals through a lengthy tribulation, and the ultra high resolution 3D images it produces will allow medical personnel to quickly determine if there are any problems that need to be dealt with. Currently, the system is being tested at Toronto General's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, but word on the street has the unit being readily available next summer.

[Via Diagnostic Imaging, thanks lmwong]

[DT @ Nov 28th 2007 12:53PM]

As a future radiologist...this machine is breathtaking, and makes me salivate.

[Chuckles McGee @ Nov 28th 2007 1:10PM]

Bleh, CT is old-school ionizing radiation. I like my 5 Tesla MRIs just fine.

[Speddy @ Nov 28th 2007 3:06PM]

Yeah. Salivate. It was shaped anymore like a big vagina, I'd get a CT every week!

[majortom @ Nov 28th 2007 3:49PM]

once you get out into the real world, you will find that the insurance companies will pay about 11 cents on the billed dollar. Oh, and good luck finding a tech to run it. We, finally, are in short supply.

[tyler @ Nov 28th 2007 4:08PM]

Nevermind, Chuckles, that CT and MRI show things differently and are indicated for different things.

[spyyder @ Nov 28th 2007 11:13PM]

radiologist = degree carrying lab technician

/future cardiologist

[Flashpoint @ Nov 28th 2007 1:08PM]

I've got just one question.

How much will this scan cost a person who either doesn't have health insurance - or doesn't have a medical insurer who is willing to pay for the scan?

[Matthew Hilario @ Nov 28th 2007 1:20PM]

probably gonna cost around the price of a plane ticket to canada.

[kjb434 @ Nov 28th 2007 1:23PM]

If you are implying that healthcare is right, get over it.

Healthcare is not a right! It's a commodity with a price tag. This fact is why national healthcare systems fall apart everywhere it is tried.

I cross my fingers that no a**holes try to force national healthcare here in the US.

[SuperPrime @ Nov 28th 2007 1:29PM]

Oh yeah national healthcare falls apart everywhere it's applied. Like the UK or France... real disaster there

[diableri @ Nov 28th 2007 1:29PM]

Less than the alternative with nearly zero chance of complications. Get over it.

[DorianGray @ Nov 28th 2007 1:55PM]

@SuperPrime

Yes, ass, *precisely* like France and the UK where people are dying to be seen by a specialist.

In the US, if you can get someone to push you thru the door of a hospital, you MUST be seen. You may not get Mayo Clinic service, but you'll be treated. It's the folks who play by the system and actually go thru insurance companies that end up getting screwed half the time.

But at least we don't have people CROSSING THE BORDER (from Canada, per se) for coverage they can't get in their own nation because of NATIONALIZED healthcare.

I don't trust the integrity and competence or the US Education system, the Energy Dept -- even the DMV. How am I going to trust gov't with my little girl's health?

[Kyrra @ Nov 28th 2007 2:28PM]

I recently had a head CT scan on, what I'm guessing, a "cheaper" machine than this. They billed my insurance company around $900 for the scan.

[SuperPrime @ Nov 28th 2007 2:58PM]

@DorianGray: So in order for you to get healthcare you have to cheat your way around the system? Oh yeah that's miiiiiles better than a system that simply treats you. And tell me... how much does your medicine cost?

I didn't want to get into an argument but you're the one who insulted me so I'm obligated to reply.

[Walt @ Nov 29th 2007 9:17PM]

The cost is based on what is scanned. A CT of the head would cost the same as a CT of the head performed on any other scanner. There is no medical "up-charge" associated with how new one's scanner is. Usually with scans of this nature, there is a "professional fee" charged by the interpreter or the exam, and a "technical fee" charged by the owner of the scanner, who also employs the technologists who acquire the images. In many situations, a radiologist might bill the professional fee, and a hospital the technical fee.

For most medical groups, reimbursement rates are set by the federal government. They assign a relative value unit or RVU value to an exam for Medicare. For example, let's say an RVU pays $78. The profession fee for a head CT might be set at 0.95 RVU this year. So, interpreting a head CT on a Medicare patient would reimburse 0.95 x $78 = $74.1

Private insurers each work their own deal out with the hospitals and physicians groups, through a periodic negotiation. For example, after negotiation an insurer might agree to pay 120% of Medicare rates, often specify which year's medicare rates as the rates change periodically to control costs. So, that private insurer would pay that group 1.2 x $74.1 for that head CT ... minus the deductible, which of course the patient pays. In any case, if the reimbursement rate from the federal government goes down - say 10%, which is the planned reimbursement drop planned for next year for all doctors - it tends to drop for private insurers as well.

Good groups will also provide free care to patients who cannot pay. For example, about 40% of the patients who are scanned while in our emergency department don't pay, but that does not affect their imaging or care. In my city and in others around the country, he have a health care sharing initiative that physicians sign up for to provide care free of charge to those who cannot afford it. Thus, even if uninsured, these patients are being cared for. Unofficially but in a very real way, the patients with insurance of some sort subsidize the care for the uninsured. My worry is that as medical imaging reimbursement rates continue to drop (14% last year due to deficit reduction act; 10% planned this year through medicare), it will be harder for physicians to continue offering free service to those who cannot pay.

[Erfan @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:37AM]

@DorianGray

How stupid and uninformed are you really? I live in Belgium and I pay 25€ a year for my health insurance and so does my dad. When he had heart surgery because of his cholesterol, you know how much he had to pay the hospital? NOTHING, he didn't have to pay one dime. Now how much does it cost to even see your general practitioner I'm wondering!

[Richard @ Nov 28th 2007 1:12PM]

mmmmm.....donut

[murray @ Nov 28th 2007 1:11PM]

I just don't think I have the space for this in my rec room.

[PEZ @ Nov 28th 2007 2:01PM]

IT LOOKS LIKE A FRIGGING BAGEL.

[Matthew Hilario @ Nov 28th 2007 1:21PM]

It's a Nexus Portal from SC2!

[Brodie @ Nov 28th 2007 1:38PM]

Whats up with the diving board in front of the Stargate?

[Generic @ Nov 29th 2007 4:54AM]

StarGate AquilionONE

[engine @ Nov 28th 2007 1:38PM]

So the medical industry is developing stargates now?

[DorianGray @ Nov 28th 2007 1:55PM]

How in the world are you going to fit the fat-asses who *really* need it thru that itty-bitty hole?

[Nestor @ Nov 28th 2007 11:30PM]

Yeah, good point. Heart disease patients sure are getting skinny it seems.

[kevin Kowalewski @ Nov 28th 2007 3:07PM]

Another success for CANADIAN medicine!

We've already got one :p

[yuhreka @ Nov 28th 2007 2:48PM]

Are you under the impression that holding your breath for merely a "second or two" will keep your heart from moving?

[romeo @ Nov 28th 2007 3:39PM]

They're eliminating respiratory motion not cardiac motion. This thing produces amazing images.

[Walt @ Nov 28th 2007 3:50PM]

At first glance i thought it was a new WII controller.

[brett @ Nov 28th 2007 3:31PM]

"so what's going to happen, doc?"

"well, we're going to use this computed axial tomography machine to acquire 320 virtual slices of your body. This will allow us to-"

"in english, please?"

"...uh...you're going to ride this plank into that big anus. "

[Ivan @ Nov 28th 2007 4:27PM]

Toshiba has always been on the forefront with their CT and M line (like Lexus and Infiniti). The problem is that American doctors are so old fashioned, they keep using thier Chryslers and Fords (GE and Siemens). The time has come to accept the better product.

[Jeff @ Nov 29th 2007 12:56AM]

This is a complicated issue, so don't get too excited too quickly. Research has been slow to show any benefit for 256-slice and higher CT last I heard, and hospitals have no idea when, where, or why to use them instead of good ol' fashioned 64-slice or lower. Most hospitals don't even have 64-slice CT...and it's not because they provide substandard care, it's because the machines are hugely expensive and haven't been shown by research to be necessary.

[Generic @ Nov 29th 2007 5:12AM]

3D sex anyone?

[locke6854 @ Nov 29th 2007 7:01AM]

I hear its just an HD-XA2 inside

[Playdrv4me @ Nov 29th 2007 5:08PM]

320 new ways to get cancer faster.

[Walt @ Nov 29th 2007 8:58PM]

Actually, by acquiring more data through 320 channels instead of 1, 4, or 16, this scanner acquires information faster and with less total radiation dose, depending on application. While most current applications do not require 320 channels, this enables certain types of studies such as coronary artery imaging to be performed more readily, preventing the need for catheters to be be threaded through the arterial system do diagnose narrowings in the coronary arteries.

CT often provides definitive diagnoses and prevents unnecessary procedures. Like angiography, it does involve ionizing radiation which, at high enough doses, can increase risk of cancers. Overutilization of CT is a growing problem and is related to a variety of issues, including a "Standard of care" that has no penalty for overutilization but outrageous penalties (via lawsuits, etc) for failure to detect an illness. This concept sounds abstract or far-fetched, but physician fear of missing a serious illness factors into almost every patient encounter.

Medical physicists, radiologists, and even manufacturers are working to limit doses to the minimum level needed to produce reasonable images. Newer technologies are helping with this. For example, a method of reconstructing CT data called iterative reconstruction which is extremely processor intensive but which produces nicer looking low-dose images than the traditional filtered back projection method are now being enabled by increasing processor power. This was shown at the recent RSNA meeting in Chicago.

Younger patients are more susceptible to the effects of radiation, and other imaging techniques such as ultrasound can often be an appropriate initial workup alternative to CT. When CT is clearly warranted, it should be used as the tool that it is, with awareness of the benefits and risks. Overemphasis of the risks of CT can be as damaging or even more damaging to patient health than underemphasis, by causing patients to refuse medically necessary exams. Examine the motive (selling newspapers? promoting an alternative technology? financial self-interest?) and facts carefully before castigating a valuable medical tool.

Walt (radiologist)

[houman1983 @ Nov 30th 2007 9:36AM]

well Walt you are a radiologist, and I'm sure radiologists would love to take back coronary artery diagnostic studies back to the field it "belongs" by 64-slice or 256-slice, or however many slices CT angio. But recent studies have, as you probably know, shown that not only they're not as good as the gold-standard coronary angio, but that it also exposes patients to higher amounts of radiation than coronary angio.

[stellar @ Dec 12th 2007 3:11PM]

Houman,Angiography produces DLP(mGycm)as much as the procedures length of time, not to mention the invasiveness of it.CTA exams provide exquisite diagnostic exams with less risk to the patient.If I had the choice, it would be a no brainer! Also, with respect to dose, if you have covered the area with one rotation, you reduce the dose and all these newer systems have dose reduction modulation automatically anyway.