Esaote North America

Advancements in technologies are paving the way for many healthcare providers to connect with patients outside their hospitals more quickly and efficiently. For cardiology departments, technologies that allow for video collaboration, rapid transmission of scans and images and other forms of telemedicine are supporting the initiative to improve productivity, an initiative many are striving for as the U.S. healthcare landscape continues reform.

Physicians have been utilizing conventional ultrasound, also known as b-mode ultrasound, for diagnostic imaging since the 1970s. However, over the past 10 years there have been significant technological improvements within the equipment, as well as development of new technologies that allowed ultrasound to become more widely adopted. Ultrasound equipment has gotten physically smaller, generates less heat and has become more power efficient. These upgrades, along with vast enhancements in image quality, have pushed ultrasound into the point-of-care setting. Point-of-care ultrasound has become widely performed in emergency rooms, PCP offices and obstetric practices. As healthcare reform continues to favor the use of more cost-effective solutions, this trend is expected to persist until ultrasound is used in every doctor’s office. 

Metal implants have often been problematic for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), leaving a “burned out” area around hardware that makes visualization of surrounding anatomy nearly impossible. Esaote has addressed this with a Metal Artifact Reduction (MAR) sequence that reduces metal-induced MRI artifacts and allows physicians to visualize tissue close to the hardware for a more complete diagnosis.

During the American College of Cardiology 2013 (ACC.13) annual meeting in March, vendors discussed several trends they are observing in the cardiac ultrasound market and displayed the latest echo advances.

June 3, 2013 — Esaote North America announced the first U.S. installation of its G-scan Brio MRI system at the Clinica Venamer in Miami. The G-scan Brio is a musculoskeletal MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) system that enables cost-effective, weight-bearing or ‘stand-up’ MRI.