Aegis Breast 3.0 that offers powerful real-time 4D image processing to be launched

Sentinelle Medical Inc., a leading manufacturer of breast MRI coils and advanced visualization software launches a suite of new leading edge clinical applications on its Aegis(TM) medical imaging software platform at this year's Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in Chicago, Nov. 30 - Dec. 5, 2009 (Booth 5800, Hall A). The applications leverage the unique high quality images generated by Sentinelle's specialized MRI imaging coils and support multiple imaging modalities for multi-parametric assessment.

Aegis(TM) Breast 3.0 offers powerful real-time 4D image processing (3D + time), made possible by specialized graphics acceleration architecture. Combined with specialized lesion kinetic and morphology visualization tools, automated image analysis and biopsy guidance, Aegis Breast 3.0 is designed to make reading simple, fast and efficient.

The combination of the impressive image quality provided by Sentinelle's Vanguard(TM) breast coils and Aegis Breast lays the groundwork for significantly greater efficiency in breast MRI. Dr. Bruce Porter, MD of First Hill Diagnostic Imaging in Seattle, WA states, "The extremely high signal to noise and resolution of the Sentinelle breast coil, especially for the axillary tail and nodes, clearly advances breast MR both for diagnosis and as a breast cancer staging tool." Michael Vendrell, MD, also of First Hill Diagnostic Imaging, has guided the Aegis team in developing multi-parametric color-maps for diffusion-weighted MRI. "These give Radiologists new tools for increasing efficiency and accuracy toward moving non-contrast body MRI into routine clinical practice. If screening non-contrast breast MR were ever to become a clinical reality, we believe tools such as these will play an important role," says Dr. Vendrell.

Aegis Breast is also available as a zero footprint web client. This revolutionary technology allows clinicians to log on from any computer within the hospital intranet on Mac, Windows or Unix environments. There is no wait time for image transfer to the client computer because all patient data stays on the server, reducing confidentiality concerns and helping sites meet HIPAA confidentiality guidlines.

Aegis Breast can also be integrated with MRI Advance 2.0, a third party web-based patient data management system. MRI Advance provides an important tracking and feedback loop for the clinician. BI-RADS assessments automatically populated, and prompts are automatically generated notifying administrative staff when to obtain patient outcome data such as pathology results. This, in turn, enables clinicians to generate statistical reports on sensitivity and specificity as a function of equipment, imaging protocol, or any one of a number of entered tracking parameters.

Sentinelle is also promoting, as a work in progress, Aegis Prostate 1.0* software for image analysis and biopsy guidance. Aegis Prostate enables multi-modality analysis including dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE), diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), permeability and image uniformity correction. Lesion identification is facilitated through multi-parametric analysis and specialized image navigation tools to help correlated findings in multiple modalities. According to Dr Masoom Haider at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, "multi-parametric analysis is essential for tumor localization with Prostate MRI, as often no single image sequence allows for confident tumor detection. By co-registering multiple image series and performing DCE-MRI and DWI analysis Aegis provides a powerful viewing platform that we hope to exploit to improve the speed and quality of prostate MRI interpretation."

Sentinelle has also been working closely with leading Radiation Oncologist Dr. Cynthia Ménard at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto on MR-guided prostate intervention. Aegis Prostate supports both needle-based transrectal and transperenial approaches for biopsy and therapy applications. Clinical workflow has been streamlined through a number of automated features including automated needle guided registration, and automated display of needle coverage area. "Aegis allows me to directly target prostate tumors for biopsy and brachytherapy under MRI guidance*" says Dr. Ménard.

"We are very proud of what we have achieved with Aegis 3.0," said Cameron Piron, Sentinelle's President and CEO, "We feel that with this release Aegis is poised to not only be a leader in the breast diagnostic and intervention areas, but also to provide the foundation for many exciting new plug-ins, extending the Aegis advantages to other areas such as prostate imaging and ultrasound imaging."