GE Healthcare announced at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA, Chicago, USA, 25–30 November) 98th annual meeting the FDA clearance for its advanced imaging tool, FlightPlan for Liver. According to the company, this tool is being developed to help make intricate liver embolization procedures simpler.
The FlightPlan for Liver tool, developed by physicians and engineers, helps interventionalists plan their liver embolization procedures. The physician needs to select the tip of the catheter and a hypervascular tumour on a 3D image, and let the software highlight the vessels traveling from the catheter to the lesion’s vicinity. The highlighted vessels can then be used as a 3D roadmap with GE’s Innova Vision application, and superimposed on the live fluoroscopic image to help the doctor guide the catheter into the target artery.
“The development of this technology for liver embolization is a great example of how collaborative work between physicians and engineers can help cancer patients. In three simple steps, the interventional radiologist can untangle the complex tumour vessels in the liver to immediately demonstrate which vessels feed the liver cancer and require catheter directed treatment,” said Stephen B Solomon, chief of Interventional Radiology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA.
“This solution exemplifies our continuous efforts to provide to interventionalists solutions to plan, guide and assess their procedures. With FlightPlan for Liver, interventionalists can gain confidence in identifying tumour-feeding vessels and be more selective when planning liver embolization. With the collaboration of leading cancer institutions such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), the Institut Gustave Roussy (IGR) and Beaujon Hospital, we can develop clinical tools that make a true difference to the doctors and more importantly to the patients,” said Chantal Le Chat, general manager, Premium Angiography, Detection & Guidance Solutions, GE Healthcare.
GE Healthcare states that FlightPlan for Liver has been commercially available in Europe, Latin America and Asia since 2011, with more than 30 installations in more than 10 countries.
