HOUSTON, June 11, 2021 United Imaging, a global leader in advanced medical imaging and radiotherapy equipment celebrating its tenth anniversary, announced a number of featured products and is highlighting several distinguished speakers at this year's SNMMI, where it is a Silver Sponsor.
The newly-minted uAI® HYPER DPR (Deep Progressive Reconstruction) is the only AI PET reconstruction technology in the market trained on high-count, total-body PET data to support small lesion detectability and improve quantitative accuracy.
On June 11, United Imaging is part of the first day of the event with a Satellite Symposium featuring speakers from Emory University School of Medicine, UC Davis Health, and UT Health Science Center. These speakers will discuss the cutting-edge clinical and research impacts of ultra-high-resolution digital PET, including the most recent clinical and research impacts of total-body PET, the clinical use of high-resolution digital cardiac PET with Rb-82, and the impact of PET AI reconstruction in routine PET imaging. We'll also moderate an interactive Q&A.
The company also has mutiple distinguished experts from the United States, South Africa, and China speaking as part of its global user meeting on June 14th entitled "Clinical Experiences With United Imaging."
The company's SNMMI theme this year is "Forward Thinking. Forward Innovation." which encompasses the vision behind everything United Imaging is presenting at SNMMI in terms of products and business programs.
Among these is the newly-minted uAI® HYPER DPR (Deep Progressive Reconstruction), which is the only AI PET reconstruction technology in the market trained on high-count, total-body PET data to support small lesion detectability and improve quantitative accuracy. In addition, United Imaging has introduced HYPER FOCUS, which reduces respiratory motion artifacts and increases SNR by using respiratory signals to generate a single PET image that is registered to the CT using 100% of the acquired PET data, without requiring additional scan time. Both uAI® HYPER DPR and HYPER FOCUS are available on uMI® 550 and uMI® 780 PET/CT systems in the U.S. as part of United Imaging's All-In Configurations™ model that includes all available functionality in new systems so customers have additional clinical tools to expand care to more patients. This technology is being rolled out in a way that breaks with industry traditions, a process which normally adds significant costs to customers and delays their ability to bring meaningful technology to patient care. To accelerate that process and help these AI technologies reach patients faster, United Imaging is providing them to the installed base at no charge as part of their award-winning Software Upgrades for Life™ program.
Jeffrey M. Bundy, Ph.D, CEO of United Imaging Healthcare Solutions, commented on the unique strengths of the company's approach to artificial intelligence. "We actually develop our uAI® technologies across modalities from the ground up, not siloed in each modality. That leads to better learning and more standardized, scalable implementation for customers, and the ability to connect AI benefits across modalities over time to impact patient care. It's also worth pointing out that in Molecular Imaging, because our uEXPLORER® technology is the foundation of our AI algorithms and it is still the only total-body scanner out there, our AI algorithms are the only ones in the world trained on total-body data. And, we know data is the foundation of all AI algorithms and the results are only as good as the training sets that are utilized."
Bundy went on to say that United Imaging was also forward-thinking in the way it chose to approach the Molecular Imaging and its other modality portfolios in line with its mission. "The core uEXPLORER technology is embedded in our most financially accessible digital PET/CT system before we move up the portfolio – that 'forward innovation' is part of how we create equal healthcare for all, and it's different from traditional industry norms." United Imaging also put the uMI 550 in a mobile trailer last year to meet demand for patient access to digital PET/CT. In the full year that the uMI 550 was the first and only digital mobile PET/CT on the market, it has served patients at dozens of hospitals across the USA.
Cheri Gottke, VP of Molecular Imaging in the U.S., explained that this year's SNMMI is a way for United Imaging to demonstrate forward thinking and forward innovation in other areas as well. "Having a system that can compete with others that are more than double the investment because of the way we build the best innovation into our equipment at all ends of the portfolio is game changing. When we tell a customer that our uMI 550 PET/CT system is AI enabled to do a total body PET exam in five minutes, the first reaction is 'but what about image quality.' Then they look at the images, and they're blown away."