Not for publication in the USA
- Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition: 1.5 Tesla MRI scanner specially designed for cardiovascular examinations
- Improved diagnostic certainty, individual treatment strategies
- Making cardiovascular MRI diagnostics accessible to new patient groups
- Faster examinations due to automation and standardization
At the ESC Congress 2018, hosted by the European Society of Cardiology, Siemens Healthineers is set to launch the Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition, a 1.5 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner designed specifically for cardiovascular examinations. Cardiovascular MRI scans have long been regarded as particularly complex and time-consuming in the clinical world. Siemens Healthineers seeks to help healthcare providers by making it easier to take advantage of the unique diagnostic information provided by cardiovascular MRI.
“We think there is huge potential in incorporating cardiovascular MRI in clinical treatment pathways and making a significant difference to patient care. Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition incorporates our very latest technologies with the specific aim of providing the maximum diagnostic information in cardiovascular examinations. This leads to faster, more reliable, and definitive diagnoses for a larger number of patients with underlying ischemic, structural, and arrhythmogenic conditions. This in turn enables us to deliver vital outcome-related information for therapy decisions and thereby optimize patient treatment pathways. The patient benefits from fast access to the right treatment, avoiding the need for unnecessary examinations or procedures. Not only can this reduce cost, it may also improve the treatment outcome, which is in the interests of both the patient and the healthcare provider,” comments Philipp Fischer, General Manager Cardiology at Siemens Healthineers.
“Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition represents a further milestone in the systematic development of MRI for cardiovascular diagnostics and treatment. Its innovative applications can cut examination times down to 20 minutes1 and clarify a broad range of clinical questions in cardiology. The many options it offers in tissue characterization make Cardiovascular MRI an essential element on the path to precision medicine. This is why we, as market leader in MRI, developed this edition,” adds Christoph Zindel, Senior Vice President and General Manager Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers.
The first Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition will be installed at the Marienhospital Gelsenkirchen, Germany, in the coming months. “A cardiac MRI is one of the methods we utilize to give our patients the best possible care,” says Sönke Thomas, Administrative Director of Marienhospital Gelsenkirchen. “Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition will help us improve our overall efficiency by significantly reducing the examination time per patient.” Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christoph Jensen, Head of Cardiology, adds: “That’s why it’s important for us to have a faster and high-quality cardiac imaging system that will reliably deliver the information we need to assist our decision-making.”
Guidelines issued by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) have long described magnetic resonance imaging as the gold standard for assessing the morphology and function of the heart. Over 25 ESC Guidelines now contain specific recommendations describing instances where MRI should be used in cardiac diagnostics.2 This is primarily due to the accuracy of MRI when quantifying cardiac volume, mass, and wall motion, as well as its ability to diagnose ischemia and myocardial viability. There are also diseases such as myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), for which cardiovascular MRI is the only non-invasive diagnostic option with the pre-requisite sensitivity. By receiving the right diagnosis at the right time, this group of patients can avoid unnecessary invasive procedures. What is more, access to the right treatment may also help save them from sudden cardiac death.
Current trends in clinical MRI are moving towards increased productivity through higher standardization. This is particularly relevant for cardiovascular MRI, which is commonly viewed as the most challenging MRI examination. Applications such as Compressed Sensing Cardiac Cine, MyoMaps, Cardiac Dot Engine and BioMatrix Technology mean that Magnetom Sola Cardiovascular Edition is able to offer functions and workflows developed especially by Siemens Healthineers to meet the requirements of cardiovascular examinations.
Cardiac patients are often older and seriously ill, men and women who are extremely unlikely to be able to hold their breath during the examinations. To help such patients Siemens Healthineers has developed the award-winning Compressed Sensing Cardiac Cine3, an application which accelerates MRI scanning sequences so that cardiac function can be measured while the patient is breathing freely. Previous scanners required patients to hold their breath for up to 20 seconds several times during the process. This means that the benefits of the gold standard are now available to new groups of patients, including individuals with irregular heart rates (arrhythmia) or difficulty breathing (dyspnea), who were previously not eligible for CMR.
The MyoMaps application from Siemens Healthineers provides quantitative information on the tissue composition of the cardiac muscle. This can be used to diagnose diseases of the heart muscle, scar tissue and edema at a very early stage of the condition, allowing the right treatment option to be chosen for the patient as soon as possible. Many clinical symptoms such as myocarditis can even be detected without using contrast agents.
Siemens Healthineers has also developed a technology making it easier to plan and perform cardiovascular MRI scans. This helps users reduce examination times and obtain reproducible results more easily. Cardiac Dot Engine, a unique software package introduced by Siemens Healthineers, provides step-by-step guidance for standardized diagnostic cardiac MRI exams. The Cardiac Dot Engine, based on artificial intelligence algorithms, allows users to navigate confidently through the cardiovascular MRI scanning process.
Standardization of MRI scans is important to produce solid, reproducible diagnostic results. BioMatrix Technology automatically adjusts to the biovariability of different patients to prevent undesirable variations in the scanning process. As a result, BioMatrix Technology reduces examination times, cuts down on the number of repeat scans, and leads to the consistent, high quality scanning results needed for getting cardiovascular patients on the right treatment pathway fast. This is a good example of how patients benefit from innovations in precision medicine.
