The U.S. FDA has cleared a new artificial intelligence tool from GE HealthCare that it says can cut scan times by upward of 83%, the company announced Monday.
Sonic DL is deep learning-powered technology designed to “dramatically” accelerate acquisition speeds. It’s targeted for use in cardiac MRI, which can require a time-consuming process that’s prone to image quality degradation when asking patients to hold their breath multiple times.
GE HealthCare said its new offering allows providers to scan the heart up to 12 times faster than conventional methods, “matching the speed of MRI to the speed of physiology.”
“Sonic DL is a paradigm shift for MR, enabling high-quality imaging in a single heartbeat,” Jie Xue, GE HealthCare’s president and CEO of global MR, said in a June 5 announcement. “It greatly expands patient access and improves diagnostic value for patients who need it the most but previously couldn’t be scanned successfully.
GE believes the technology also could help to bolster physician productivity, streamline workflows, reduce backlogs and minimize staff burden. The company hopes to eventually expand its AI deep learning technology across all anatomies.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.