At this week's U.K. Radiological Congress (UKRC) in Manchester, Philips Healthcare unveiled AlluraClarity, a new family of interventional x-ray systems that feature the company's ClarityIQ x-ray doseereduction technology.
The product is currently only available in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and not in the U.S., the company said.
ClarityIQ yields typical dose reductions of 73% in neuro procedures, 50% in cardiac procedures, and 83% in vascular interventional procedures while delivering equivalent or better image quality, according to the vendor.
Employing image processing technology developed by sister company Philips Research, ClarityIQ works in real-time to deliver optimum image quality with noise and artifact reduction on both moving structures and objects, the company said. It also provides image enhancement and edge sharpening, as well as automatic real-time patient and accidental table motion correction on live images.
A flexible digital imaging pipeline from tube to display is tailored for every application area, allowing users to select virtually unlimited application-specification configurations, according to the vendor. ClarityIQ also fine-tunes more than 500 system parameters for each application area.
In a recent clinical trial at Karolinska Hospital, AlluraClarity with ClarityIQ technology was shown to provide equivalent image quality to Philips' current Allura Xper system at 73% less dose.
The Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast is the first to place an order for AlluraClarity, Philips said.
In addition, a potential site has been identified to investigate the use of AlluraClarity in cardiac angiography, according to the company. Preliminary data from a field test indicated that 50% of the dose can provide equivalent image quality when compared with images of their current interventional system, Philips said.
