GE Healthcare introduced Advantage Workstation VolumeShare 4 as an option for its multi-modality Advantage Workstation at the 2009 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting in Chicago earlier this month. The new 3D multimodality workstation targets interventional visualization by integrating imaging across modalities, allowing use of multimodality patient image information and providing advanced capabilities during an interventional procedure.

The company said its VolumeShare 4 multi-modality volume viewer software integrates 3D images from its Innova interventional imaging system, as well as CT, MR, PET and PET/CT datasets to support new interventional visualization functions and analysis that are targeted for planning and navigation during image-guided interventional therapies, as well as monitoring the procedure results.

The system provides information about the anatomy of the area to be treated, GE said. The software makes it possible to use the multi-modality images not just for diagnosis, but to steer the interventional gantry to different angles around the patient. Also, the Advantage Workstation VolumeShare 4:

• Provides images to show needle entry point and the final target.
• Combines images from other 3D modalities, such as CT and MRI, to show things that x-ray may not reveal.
• Enables “before” and “after” comparisons, i.e., comparing an x-ray image to either an MR image with physiology, comparing a CT image with anatomy or comparing the uptake of a radioactive PET tracer to blood flow in a region.

The Advantage Workstation VolumeShare 4 with new multi-modality Image Registration capabilities makes it practical to overlay and match existing 3D images from different modalities, providing information to plan and guide interventional procedures.