New CT Scanner Able to Image Rodent Heart Beating at 600 Beats-Per-Minute

WAUKESHA, Wis., Aug 04, 2008 — GE Healthcare announced today the commercial release of a new pre-clinical computed tomography scanner specifically designed to accelerate research in the areas of cardiac disease and drug development.

The GE eXplore CT 120 scanner is an all-new design based on years of research CT scanner experience. Using x-ray source technology derived from clinical systems, the eXplore CT 120 features 100 times the output of previous GE laboratory research imaging systems. This power enables x-ray exposures fast enough and detailed enough to capture the motion of a beating mouse heart, and brings the power of cardiac CT imaging to a popular mammal used in disease research and drug development.

The power of the new x-ray source also allows for more effective filtering of the x-ray beam, reducing the x-ray dose to the research subject compared to previous scanners, while greatly reducing the scan time.

“Morphological imaging is the key to understanding cardiac kinetics,” said Professor Andre Constantinesco of Hopitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg. “This scanner provides us the ability to acquire 4D, high-resolution datasets in living mice improving our ability to quantify rodent models of cardiac diseases.”

The scanner’s user software is designed for throughput and, with its powerful computing hardware, makes the scanner four times faster than previous designs. Industry-standard DICOM compatibility and an optional analysis workstation assist in timely image analysis and production of research data.

“We are excited to introduce this brand-new scanner design for the drug development and research market,” said Jim Mitchell, general manager for molecular imaging technologies at GE Healthcare. “It brings cardiac imaging and high throughput capabilities that before now were not available in a laboratory CT imaging system. Together with our new tri-modal offerings and CZT SPECT, the eXplore CT 120 makes GE Healthcare a one-stop-shop for advanced pre-clinical imaging technologies.”

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare’s broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (GE: