Philips Announces Global Commercial Shipments of the Brilliance 40-Channel CT Scanner and Reveals a 64-Channel Upgrade
ANDOVER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 30, 2004--
Advanced Brilliance 40-channel CT scanner developed in partnership with key customers around world
Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG; AEX: PHI) today announced commercial shipment of its Brilliance 40-channel computed tomography (CT) scanner to the global imaging community, for installation in October. Working with eight hospital sites around the world to establish clinical capabilities, the Philips Brilliance 40-channel represents the industry's first scanner with detector coverage of 40mm, reconstruction speed of up to 40 images per second and 40-channel acquisition. In addition, Philips will unveil a 64-channel upgrade package available to all 40-channel systems at the Journees Francaises de Radiologie (JFR) congress, October 2-6, 2004 in Paris, France.
Introduced at last year's Radiological Society of North American (RSNA) meeting and already in place at several prominent healthcare facilities worldwide, the Brilliance 40-channel configuration has already accumulated information on more than 7,500 patients. In routine exams and advanced cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurovascular and trauma applications, the Brilliance 40-channel scanner has proven to help deliver better clinical insight and patient care through vivid, more precise imaging of key anatomy.
"Philips is proud to mark global commercial delivery of the industry's first high-end multichannel CT scanner with the Brilliance 40-channel configuration," said Jim Green, senior vice president and general manager, CT, for Philips Medical Systems. "The Brilliance 40-channel scanner has already enhanced clinical insight and changed methods of assessing patients at several key healthcare institutions, and we are thrilled to make this exciting diagnostic tool available on a global scale."
As demonstrated in a June webcast, the Brilliance 40-channel scanner has enabled clinicians at collaborating institutions to utilize clinical techniques previously unavailable, including viewing wider scan areas and fast, high-quality images of entire organs, even in motion. The scanner's acquisition and reconstruction speed, in combination with the Brilliance Workspace user environment, significantly reduces the time to diagnosis, while simultaneously increasing patient comfort through shorter breath holds, resulting in enhanced patient diagnosis and treatment strategy.
Philips designed the scanner in collaboration with important medical facilities around the world, such as Indiana University School of Medicine (Indianapolis, Ind.), Carmel Medical Center (Haifa, Israel), University Medical Center Utrecht (Utrecht, Netherlands), Fletcher Allen Health Care (Burlington, Vt.), MetroHealth Medical Center (Cleveland, Ohio), the University of Ulm (Ulm, Germany), Hospital de la Petie Salpetriere (Paris, France) and the University of Chicago Medical Center (Chicago, Ill.). Philips and its partners continue to research and expand clinical boundaries with the new capabilities of the Brilliance 40-channel scanner in crucial areas including CT angiography, abdominal exams, cardiac and cardiovascular imaging, pulmonary imaging, neurological perfusion studies, virtual colonoscopy, and trauma cases.
The performance boost enabled by the newly introduced 64-channel upgrade option for the 40-channel systems will deliver thin-slice acquisition capabilities to the full 40mm width of the Brilliance CT detector by increasing the number of simultaneously acquired data acquisition channels to 64.
"The added enhancement of the 64-channel upgrade option on the 40-channel units will create more dynamic clinical breakthroughs and improved patient treatment," said Green. "By upgrading to 64-channels, clinicians will be able to easily capture even richer visual detail, covering a large area of the body, in less time, all with high levels of patient comfort."
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 29 billion in 2003. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 165,600 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and silicon system solutions. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter.
Philips Medical Systems
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email: heidi.wilson@philips.com
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