From the June 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Hargrave said the scanner will include the company’s respiratory gating technology, a new quantitative analysis tool and new AI-based image reconstruction technology.

Prescient Imaging
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently finalized its Medicare coverage policy for treatment of Alzheimer’s with monoclonal antibodies directed against amyloid plaques in approved clinical trials.
As a result, Prescient Imaging has been receiving interest in its BBX PET
portable PET scanner, which was FDA cleared in March of 2021.

“There are up to a million and a half people who are covered by the CMS announcement and each of those patients needs at least one PET scan,” said David Haar, vice president of marketing for Prescient Imaging. “If you take a million and a half patients and you say, well, that'll take about 45 minutes a patient, you're talking about 1,125,000 hours of scanning that need to be done. And no one that we've spoken to believes there's that kind of excess capacity in the PET imaging delivery system. … I think the point of care in a neurologist’s office is going to be the best place for that.”

Haar believes PET imaging will follow the trend of X-ray imaging and ultrasound that’s delivered at the point of care.

“X-ray used to be a very advanced technology and you had to go to the hospital to get it,” Haar said. “Now there's an X-ray machine in every NFL stadium around the country. Ultrasound used to be advanced. Now, most OB/GYN practices do it in house, and we certainly think that trend will continue. We have a small lightweight portable PET camera that's affordable for a neurology practice, and we think it will follow that same trend to the point of care.”

The BBX PET will make it practical for neurology practices with multiple locations to own their own PET scanner and be able to move it between their office locations.

“If you've got five office locations, which a lot of large practices do, you don't you don't need to buy a PET scanner for each location,” Haar said.

Siemens Healthineers
At the beginning of this year, Siemens Healthineers released the Biograph Vision Mobile Edition, a PET/CT system available on wheels.

The system, with the company’s SiPM-based detector technology and fast Time-of-Flight performance, is aimed at health systems that need to service regional areas in oncology, neurology, cardiology and orthopedics.

“Patients don’t have to travel long distances to have a PET/CT scan, enabling access to quality patient care no matter where they live,” said Katherina Swystun, global marketing manager for molecular imaging at Siemens Healthineers.

June 2022 Magazine

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