Dear Friend;
Attached is a news release announcing a grant and technical support from NRC-IRAP. Here some background:
1. Our VMS+ product works using 2D views of the heart to create a 3D image of the whole heart and then analyzes it for volumetric function. It only creates this 3D image at the beginning and ending of the heart beat as this is all that is required for volumetric analysis.
2. If you image the heart using a 3D probe you get a holographic image of the heart and if you get a good enough image, you can create 4D image of the beating heart. This is not done routinely as the images are generally poor quality and it is difficult to get even these poor images. For the left ventricle a decent image might be obtained 60% of time on people with mild heart conditions. For the right side of the heart it about 40% of patients and lower for people with significant heart disease, so the technique is not used. Eventually the hardware will improve and better 3D images will be more reliable, but this will likely take another decade or more to achieve. Research has show wall motion and heart mass are useful parameters to measure to monitor the condition of the heart.
3. We have obtained a grant (IRAP) and technical support from the Canadian Government’s National Research Council to develop the VMS 2D system to create a beating heart by analyzing all the video frames in a convention 2D scan and not just the two we currently use. Depending on the heart rate, there are 16 to 20 frames in a heart beat so lots more information is available from 2D echocardiography without needing to go to 3D scanning and deal with the poor quality images. 2D scanning works 90% of the time (we are working on showing the VMS+ can analyze the other 10% as well).
4. If successful, this would be a new way to measure wall velocity and mass for all 4 chambers of the heart and would be a world’s first. More importantly, these measurements are known to be useful in characterizing heart disease and its progression (they can be measured using MRI, but it is costly and time consuming, so also not done routinely). Cardiologists need a rapid, reliable and easy way to get this information and we believe the VMS can be expanded to do this.
Our focus is still on sales, but with the grant from NRC-IRAP and their technical help, we can also push ahead with innovations like 4D imaging to build our position as a world leader in heart analysis.
