Sonic DL enables high-quality cardiac MRI in a single heartbeat and reduces the time required for capturing cardiac MRI scans by up to 83%, to help enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and reduce the burden on radiology staff
Sonic DL extends MRI access to cardiac patients. (Credit: GE HealthCare)
GE HealthCare has announced the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and roll-out of Sonic DL, its new deep learning-based technology to enhance image acquisition in MRI.
Sonic DL enables new imaging approaches, such as high-quality cardiac MRI in a single heartbeat, expanding the company’s portfolio of AI-powered solutions.
The tool also reduces the time required for cardiac MRI scans by up to 83% to help enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and reduce the burden on radiology staff.
Its technology tracks the beating heart with enhanced image quality and addresses the limitations of conventional acceleration techniques.
GE HealthCare aims to expand the new deep learning-based technology across all anatomies.
GE HealthCare global MR president and CEO Jie Xue said: “Sonic DL is a paradigm shift for MR enabling high-quality imaging in a single heartbeat. It greatly expands patient access and improves diagnostic value for patients who need it the most but previously couldn’t be scanned successfully.
“Our industry-leading deep learning technology, AIR Recon DL, has already benefited more than 10 million patients. We expect Sonic DL to further extend the lead of GE HealthCare in leveraging AI to advance healthcare and benefit patients around the world.”
According to GE HealthCare, Cardiac MRI is the gold standard for evaluating the structure and function of the heart in cardiovascular disease.
However, the global adoption of Cardiac MRI is relatively low, partly due to prolonged exam times, as the current MRI speed is too slow to capture the heart’s contraction in real time.
Radiologists are required to scan several heartbeats and multiple breath-holds, which is time-consuming, prone to image quality degradation, and exhausting for patients.
GE HealthCare said its Sonic DL for cardiac MRI, designed to scan up to 12 times faster than conventional methods, will address those challenges.
It enables rapid cardiac MR functional imaging, where the speed of MRI matches the speed of a single heartbeat.
Sonic DL simplifies procedures by eliminating the need for repetitive patient breath holds and expands the pool of patients eligible for cardiac MRI, said the healthcare technology company.