Advanced Cardiovascular Functionality Provides Researchers with Diverse Monitoring Capabilities for More Concise Pre-Clinical Findings
Toronto, Ontario. – March 9, 2006 – Adding to its in vivo micro-imaging leadership position VisualSonics, the world’s only developer of high-resolution, ultrasound-based micro-imaging systems, announced today new cardiovascular functionalities for its Vevo 770™ high-resolution micro-ultrasound system making the platform more powerful and quantitative for cardiovascular researchers. The company is making this announcement from the American College of Cardiology Conference (Booth 4533) in Atlanta, Georgia, being held March 11-14, 2006.
Providing significant improvements for the preclinical cardiovascular researcher, new features include Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI), integrated blood pressure analysis, automated left ventricular functional analysis, anatomical M-Mode and extended measurement capabilities.
According to Dr. Attila Kovacs, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, a beta site tester, “The advanced cardiovascular functionality makes the Vevo even more useful in my preclinical cardiovascular research performed in the Mouse Cardiovascular Phenotyping Core laboratory. By using the enhanced cardiovascular features, such as TDI, our team at Washington University was able to reliably measure intramyocardial velocity gradients and strain rates in different mouse models of cardiac diseases. Our preliminary experience with the integrated telemetry blood pressure monitoring system also shows that this new feature will be highly valuable in monitoring load-independent parameters of cardiac performance on a longitudinal basis ”.
“ We are greatly encouraged by the research findings many of our customers have discovered by using the Vevo system,” said VisualSonics President and CEO Tom Little. “We are happy that our decision to further the Vevo’s unique offering in the preclinical micro-imaging and micro-ultrasound space is allowing customers to conduct and publish innovative work.”
Cardiovascular studies using VisualSonics’ Vevo technology by various researchers at leading academic institutions led to recently published findings in Circulation Research, The Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, Circulation and The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology.
Enhanced Cardiovascular Functionality
The Vevo’s new TDI feature allows quantitative myocardial analysis to be performed and used for regional myocardial strain rate. In addition, the new integrated blood pressure analysis functionality allows the Vevo 770 system to integrate a blood pressure signal from a third-party continuous pressure monitoring system. Examples of this include integration with conductance catheter and telemetry blood pressure monitoring. The integrated blood pressure can be combined with the Vevo ultrasound image data and corresponding measurements to perform pressure-volume and vascular strain analysis.
Other new features, including the automated left ventricular (LV) functional analysis provides semi-automated continuous tracing of the chamber walls in the left ventricle in either B- or M-Mode. In addition, the Vevo software automatically generates standard left ventricular measurements and calculations derived from the traced contours and the collected physiological data. Finally, many enhancements have been added to the Vevo Measurement and Calculations package to ensure that it is complete, flexible, easy-to-use, and address the multiple and different needs of the small animal cardiovascular researcher.
About VisualSonics
VisualSonics is the world’s leading developer of high-resolution, ultrasound-based, in vivo micro-imaging systems designed specifically for non-invasive small animal research. The company’s enabling micro-ultrasound technology, the Vevo 770, allows researchers at many of the world’s most prestigious pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, hospitals and research centers to conduct genetic research, phenotypic study and drug development.
Micro-ultrasound is the fastest growing preclinical imaging modality. This enabling technology is facilitating research in cardiac and vascular disease, cancer, stem cell research and developmental biology. When compared to other imaging options, only micro-ultrasound has the combination of high-resolution, real-time imaging, in vivo detection and analysis, reasonable cost, ease of use, portability and no negative biological effects. More information on VisualSonics and micro-ultrasound can be found at www.visualsonics.com.
Contacts:
Jennifer Viera
Schwartz Communications
visualsonics@schwartz-pr.com
781/684-0770