Sentinelle Medical's Aegis Navigation MRI and ultrasound imaging system showcased at RSNA 2009

Sentinelle Medical Inc., a leading manufacturer of MRI coils and advanced visualization software is demonstrating a number of innovative new works-in-progress, including MRI and ultrasound co-registration offering at RSNA 2009.

Aegis(TM) Navigation* performs registration between MRI or CT and live ultrasound images to bring high quality imaging from the scanner room to the ultrasound suite. This permits investigating the same anatomical features under two types of imaging at the same time. Specialized hardware and software automates registration between modalities, and instruments are spatially tracked using advanced 3D optical or magnetic tracking systems. Clinicians select anatomical targets based on information from multiple imaging modalities to maximize sensitivity and specificity, and an interactive targeting interface quickly guides clinicians towards the region of interest. Aegis Navigation can be configured as a standalone system or be customized and integrated directly into ultrasound platforms. The first such product is Aegis Navigation for the Ultrasonix SonixTOUCH ultrasound machine.

"Multi-modality imaging is of utmost importance in the management of liver metastases from colorectal cancer, where every lesion is important." says Dr Laurent Milot of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. "Through our Investigational Studies+, Aegis Navigation has been able to combine Ultrasound and MRI for pre-operative planning of liver resection to provide a 50% increase in the number of lesions detected with Aegis Navigation compared to ultrasound alone. This clearly opens the door to new and innovative approaches to diagnose and treat the disease."

"Sentinelle is committed to leveraging the power of multi-modality imaging to bring needed tools to the clinician, to aid them in the diagnosis, treatment and management of cancer," said Cameron Piron, Sentinelle's President and CEO. "Aegis Navigation is an important step for Sentinelle as it extends our product line relevance into new clinical applications. We look forward to making the same impact as we did with Breast MRI."