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Five Heartbeats Later New Technology Offers Detailed Images of the Heart

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 21:00 CDT

A man walks into the hospital suffering from chest pains. It could be nothing. But it could also be something very serious, even deadly, like an aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism or coronary artery disease.

With the new $1.6 million General Electric LightSpeed VCT machine, doctors at about 200 hospitals across the nation, including Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, only need five heartbeats to produce an image capable of helping to diagnose those life-threatening illnesses. That process goes by the term Triple RuleOut, which is a marketing term trademarked by GE.

The scanner introduced earlier this year can take up to 64 images, each of an area as thin as a credit card, with one rotation. The entire heart can be imaged to a level of detail never before seen in five seconds, an organ in one second and the entire body in 10 seconds.

Aside from the obvious advantages of a quicker scan from the perspective of comfort and convenience are those of science.

By basically stopping the motion of the heart in taking the images, and being able to capture what is happening in the body while staying ahead of the blood flow, doctors get data and images unadulterated by other changes within the body.

The evolving technology promises to replace invasive catheter angiograms, stress testing and X-rays in certain situations, and offers an unprecedented look at the hard and soft plaque buildup within the body. Scanning of this type has been in use for less than two years at Good Shepherd, said Dr. Robert Hendel, a cardiologist, and the most effective uses for it are still being learned.

The hospital already has the 64-slice scanner and its predecessor, the 16-slice scanner, in use by 75 to 80 patients a day. Soon, it will offer coronary artery calcification scoring and lung-screening tests to the public at a cost of $350 to $500 per scan as a preventive measure for lifelong smokers or others worried about their health, said Paul Mosebach, director of the hospital's radiology department.

But Hendel stresses that the best use for the scanner will likely be for those who have exhibited some symptoms. The amount of radiation it emits is "not trivial," Hendel said. In addition, patients must take a contrasting agent intravenously that can harm kidneys and have other side effects.

But doctors have not even begun to understand the potential of a CT, or computer tomography, system with this level of detail and speed, said Hendel, who recently finished his term as president of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology.

The incredible amount of data regarding hard and soft plaque, for example, shows where it is within the body with the new scanner, but it remains unknown exactly how those deposits will behave or if they will cause problems, he said.

He helped found an organization six months ago aimed at educating other physicians about the technology and promoting research into it. Even techniques like the Triple RuleOut for those experiencing chest pains have not yet been the subject of clinical research, he said.

Basically, he said, the amount of information even the five- heartbeat scan produces is far ahead of doctors' current ability to use it.

Regardless, the promise of the technology is obvious to anyone looking at one of the images it has produced.

Uses will include everything from a work-up once a stroke occurs, cancer care, kidney, liver and lung exams, spinal injuries and inner ear ailments.

"It's going to spread like wildfire," Hendel said of the CT scanning technology.

Besides Good Shepherd, those with a LightSpeed VCT scanner include: Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, West Suburban Cardiologists in LaGrange, Provena Mercy Medical Center in Aurora, Decatur Memorial Hospital and Methodist Medical Center of Illinois in Peoria.

For more information visit www.gehealthcare.com/usen/ct/products/ vct.html.

Source: Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.

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