December 5, 2008 - As the next phase in validating advanced computed tomography technology in a clinical setting, Toshiba Medical Systems Corp. will support CORE 320, the largest worldwide multi-center trial comparing the effectiveness of 320-detector row dynamic volume CT to SPECT technology in cardiac evaluation.
The trial will examine whether the combination of CT angiography and myocardial perfusion can identify coronary stenoses that are less than or equal to 50 percent by quantitative coronary analysis (QCA) and correspond to a SPECT perfusion defect. CORE 320 will begin in December 2008.
The Aquilion ONE, the dynamic volume CT system to be used in CORE 320. The trial will be lead by primary investigator Dr. Joao A. C. Lima of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, MD. Johns Hopkins University will also serve as the core site for CT. Dr. Marcelo Di Carli of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital, in Boston, MA. will serve as core site for SPECT. Additional investigation sites will be announced in the coming months.
“We expect CORE 320 findings to impact the way the medical community views the role of dynamic volume CT in the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening diseases,” explained Toki. “These results eventually could impact they way patients are diagnosed and treated.”
Toshiba believes in developing technology that helps improve patient outcomes and as such, sponsors clinical trials to assure new technology adds true value to the healthcare system and patient. CORE 320 is the next phase of that validation strategy.
Prior to CORE 320, Toshiba funded the CorE 64 (Coronary Evaluation using multidetector 64 CT) trial, an international multi-center trial to validate multidetector CT’s ability to detect coronary artery disease (CAD) as compared to conventional coronary angiography (CCA). On Nov. 26, 2008, the New England Journal of Medicine published the promising results of the CorE 64 trial stating “multidetector CT angiography accurately identifies the presence and severity of obstructive coronary artery disease and subsequent revascularization in symptomatic patients.”
Another Toshiba trial, faCTor64, the Screening For Asymptomatic Obstructive Coronary Artery Disease Among High-Risk Diabetic Patients Using CT Angiography, Following CorE 64, is being conducted at Intermountain Healthcare’s Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City. More than 1,000 patients from Utah, women older than 55 and men older than 50 are enrolled in the faCTor64 study. Intermountain Healthcare CORE 320 Multi-Center Trial used its diabetes registry of 30,000 patients, who have already received best-practice diabetic care, as a resource to enroll patients.
Introduced in November 2007, dynamic volume CT scans an entire organ in a single pass and produces 4D videos that show an organ’s structure, its movement and blood flow. In comparison, a 64-slice, 128-slice or 256-slice CT scan can only capture a portion of an organ in a single pass, requiring physicians to “stitch together” multiple scans of an organ to get a full image. The new technology helps reduce multiple exposures to radiation and exam time.
For more information, visit www.medical.toshiba.com
