GE Healthcare said this week that researchers enabled with the company’s CT platform have developed a method to acquire volume dual energy images for the first time. The method is currently under investigation at Keio University in Japan, where the first clinical images were captured by Dr. Sachio Kuribayashi, chairman and professor of Radiology, on his LightSpeed VCT.

This innovation has the future potential to enable an existing system to capture dual-energy images, said Gene Saragnese, global VP of Molecular Imaging & CT, GE Healthcare. “This approach, utilizing a unique acquisition protocol useable to the full 50cm field of view, may help clinicians expand clinical capabilities with new applications that could include material decomposition (e.g. separation of iodine and calcium) and simplifying bone vessel segmentation,” he added.

By building on the foundation of GE’s advanced CT platform, potential future clinical implementation of this research method may allow existing users to expand the clinical utility of volume CT.

GE is discussing the CT research project this week at the 8th Annual International Symposium on Multidetector-Row CT, sponsored by Stanford Radiology. Dr. Kuribayashi is presenting the first clinical images at this event.