Siemens Healthcare has launched syngo.via Frontier, a new innovation in CT clinical imaging research.
The advanced software solution provides direct access to new research prototypes, delivers the means for individual prototype development, and enables users to obtain access to an international online community and share experiences with fellow researchers. This paves the way for hospitals and research facilities in the UK to evaluate a greater number of new CT techniques and contribute to international scientific discussion. It can also be used for the development and testing of MR prototypes.
“Research in medical imaging is important, whether that is evaluating new scan protocols, monitoring for treatment success, or testing and analysing new advanced imaging software,” said Ben Reed, syngo business manager for the UK and Ireland at Siemens Healthcare.
“Traditional research software is often installed on a computer away from the everyday reading location. Rather than operating on a standalone basis, syngo.via Frontier is integrated with the clinical syngo.via server meaning research prototypes can be accessed by any syngo.via user in the facility. This enables researchers to easily send and retrieve data for inclusion in research.”
The new syngo.via Frontier enables hospitals or research facilities to create their own prototype software, which can be made available to other clinics for their ongoing research. The Prototype Store allows users to easily manage prototypes and trigger new prototype installations. Siemens already provides access to a set of prototypes in the fields of cardiovascular and Dual Energy CT, ready to be added to by Siemens and contributions from external partners in the future.
Reed said: “The global exchange of data and ideas could transform research endeavours for those with limited resources, encouraging collaboration and perhaps even facilitating the set-up and management of international multicentre studies. Ambitious users are able to design and implement their own prototypes in order to leverage personal research activities as well as implement the use of 3D printing to bring prototypes to life.”
Some of the research prototypes readily available include Coronary Plaque Analysis, which uses advanced tools to analyse atherosclerotic plaque morphology and to characterise different plaque composites, such as lipid and fibrous. Dual Energy Rho/Z Maps provides algorithms that achieve a direct visualisation and quantification of electron density. Along with this, DE scatter plots allows a novel representation of Dual Energy information with the energy dependencies of materials shown within a Region of Interest being visualised graphically.
With continuous innovation in the field of CT imaging technology and the pioneering syngo.via Frontier platform, the launch underlines Siemens Healthcare’s ongoing commitment as a partner of science to hospitals and research facilities across the UK. The technology follows the recent introduction of version VA30 of Siemens Healthcare’s advanced reading and visualisation software, syngo.via.