Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. announced that its Aquilion ONE has been named a winner in the Medical Design Excellence Awards, a program organized by Canon Communications and sponsored by the company's Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry magazine. The world's first dynamic volume CT scanner is a winner in the Radiology and Electromechanical Device category. "The Medical Design Excellence Awards recognizes Toshiba's commitment to developing world class equipment," said Doug Ryan, senior director, CT Business Unit, Toshiba. "This award is a testament to the research, engineering and product development capabilities of the company." Toshiba's vision for the Aquilion ONE dates back to the early 1990s. Having recently pioneered the development of helical scanning, an innovation that altered the way patients were diagnosed with CT, Toshiba defined a new vision for the future of CT. Helical scanning techniques provided the breakthrough capabilities to cover more anatomical area and acquire volume data sets through several rotations around the body. However, Toshiba and its customers were already thinking ahead to the next breakthrough — a CT system that would cover a whole organ, like the heart or brain, in one rotation. To fulfill this customer vision Toshiba developed a roadmap to build the world's first dynamic volume CT system. When Toshiba developed its first Aquilion multi-detector product, the company's engineers carefully designed the multi-detector system from the ground up based on customer feedback so that it could evolve into future models. This development philosophy was a totally innovative approach to CT technology as it was completely new in all aspects, not simply modifications of single-detector platforms. Using the same philosophy, the Aquilion ONE has been designed using key elements from the multi-detector design concept to support both today's applications and future expectations for CT imaging. "Customer feedback was critical to the development of the Aquilion ONE," continued Ryan. "Partnering with our customers to ensure that the Aquilion ONE would make a profound difference to the medical community was a key element in the development program." Introduced in November 2007, dynamic volume CT scans an entire organ in a single pass and produces 4D videos that show an organ's structure, its movement and blood flow. In comparison, a 64-slice, 128-slice or 256-slice CT scan can only capture a portion of an organ in a single pass, requiring physicians to "stitch together" multiple scans of an organ to get a full image. The new technology helps reduce multiple exposures to radiation and exam time.