GE Healthcare introduced Friday new multi-modality image fusion software called CardIQ Fusion. The software brings together anatomical and physiological data from CT, PET, and nuclear medicine images on the company’s AW Workstation to enable analysis in a single application, the company said.

CardIQ Fusion allows clinicians to fuse CT anatomical data such as coronary angiography with PET or SPECT based physiological data such as perfusion or viability, in a dynamic manner to evaluate cardiovascular disease. Clinicians can use the application to review and analyze angiographic data from CT for stenosis detection, vessel analysis and quantification, much like the cardiac CT application, CardIQ Xpress. In the same application, clinicians can assess physiological data such as perfusion and viability from PET or SPECT studies in the ASNC layout.

Images can be viewed in a 3D rendered format as well as 2D reformats such as axial, sagittal, coronal and curvilinear views allowing for the best assessment of underlying anatomy and physiology. Furthermore, CardIQ Fusion allows the registration of anatomical and physiological data semi-automatically. Following the computer aided registration of anatomical and physiological data, clinicians can adjust the results by translational and rotational refinement tools, GE said.

Once registered, fused images enable clinicians to utilize the correlation between anatomical and physiological information — such as the stenotic coronary artery and the relevant myocardial radiotracer uptake distribution -- to identify the vessels to adopt the right treatment method. Images generated on the same patient but on different systems on different dates, or on a hybrid system just minutes apart, can all be fused together using the software. Images can be reviewed separately or as a set of fused images.

At the Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) in San Diego last week, it was announced that the ‘Image of the Year’ award was given to an image created with CardIQ Fusion. The image was generated by Professor Kaufmann at the University Hospital, Zurich, based on an Infinia Hawkeye and LightSpeed VCT study, GE said.