NOMOS Radiation Oncology, a division of North American Scientific, has announced that it received FDA clearance to market nomosSTAT, the serial tomotherapy automated treatment solution, which was introduced at the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO) in October 2005.
nomosSTAT integrates nomosSTAT MLC and AutoCrane with a single user interface and connects to the CORVUS IMRT inverse planning system.

Along with the American Healthcare Radiology Administrators (AHRA) 34th Annual Meeting and Exposition came Kodak’s introduction of the Point-of-Care CR-ITX 560. The device is an integrated portable X-ray/computed radiography (CR) system for mobile medical imaging applications.
The CR-ITX 560 can perform diagnostic X-ray imaging right at the patient’s bedside in a number of settings, including intensive care units, clinics, nursing homes and hospitals of all sizes. The unit combines a tabletop Kodak CR system and imaging processing software with a Siemens portable X-ray system.

Fuji Computed Radiography for Mammography (FCRm) has received approval from the FDA to be sold in the U.S. The solution offers a combination of image quality, versatility and practicality, and according to the company, is expected to see rapid adoption in the U.S.
FCRm provides 18-by-24-cm and 24-by-30-cm fields-of-view, 50-micron pixel sampling and Fuji’s patented dual-side reading technology.

The ATEC Emerald was designed specifically for clinicians performing MRI-guided breast biopsy and for facilities with dedicated breast MRI programs.

An upgrade to the Nemio ultrasound system from Toshiba America Medical Systems is now available. The Nemio XG features enhancements from the company’s Xario ultrasound system, which may allow patients to receive a diagnosis in just one visit to their physician, as opposed to an ultrasound and a return visit for a second test.

XKnife RT 4.0 is an update to XKnife RT 3.0, which is used by neurosurgeons, oncologists, physicists and dosimetrists. Its new features intend to increase patient throughput and speed up the planning process.
These new features include: sculpt mode contouring to create and edit contours by sculpting them from inside or outside the contour borders with a circular paint brush; bony segmentation to visualize bony anatomy; split-slice contouring to visualize two correlated data sets simultaneously; and more.


For most of us, handheld devices put the “fun” in functional. In the medical world, these tools do much more — they help save lives.



When mechanical ventilation is initiated for surgical and acute-unit patients, protecting the fragile lungs while assisting or performing the respiratory function is paramount. Developments in automation of ventilators today largely facilitate important aspects of airway management and support clinical decision-making, but the skill and knowledge of the respiratory therapist or attending physician remains the essential, driving engine in this vital area of patient care.


The new proprietary Snap-Cap keeps the nozzle and aperture protected from the work environment. The open and closing of the cap with one hand allows the user to maintain position and procedure continuity. It is engineered to eliminate drips and “drawback.” Its exclusive self-sealing silicone valve instantly cuts off the flow of gel maintaining a clean and safe work environment by preventing drips and product residue while eliminating product drawback into the bottle, thus reducing the potential for cross-contamination.

SoftMed introduced ChartScript ASP, a hosted solution for transcription, speech recognition and computer-aided medical transcription at HIMSS 2006. ChartScript ASP enables healthcare facilities and transcription providers to take advantage of the latest in transcription technology without the resource expense and capital investment costs of maintaining a large transcription portal and speech recognition server. Additionally, in a hosted environment, the investment costs can be shared among multiple enterprises.

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