So far, units are installed at three test sites in the United States. It's pending FDA clearance, and the company expects it to be commercially available by July 2011. The 1.5T model will go for around $1.5 million and the 3T for $2.5 million, Philips said.

Photoacoustics research

Although the magnets were drawing the crowds, over in a different corner of the booth, Philips' research division was quietly discussing future technologies, mostly still in the conceptual or preclinical phase.

One of the technologies discussed aims to make sampling sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer cases easier. As the Philips research team explained, when doctors want to see if cancer has spread from a tumor in the breast to the lymph nodes, they often have to conduct a biopsy of the lymphatic tissue, which usually involves a minor surgery. According to Philips' estimates, there are about 100,000 to 120,000 such procedures a year, and for around 76 percent of biopsies, the results are negative.

Theoretically, a new technology could help make the procedures less invasive. Philips is looking into using ultrasound for a technique called photoacoustics to help doctors visualize the lymph nodes so they can guide the biopsy needle without surgery.

As Steve Klink, the spokesman for the Philips Research division puts it, the aim of photoacoustics is to "listen to the color of light." In essence, it works like this: when struck with light of the right wavelength, tissues will heat up and expand, and release ultrasound waves, which can then be picked up by an ultrasound transducer.

For the biopsy, Philips would use a modified ultrasound unit with a red laser. First, the patients would be injected with a methylene blue dye that's taken up by the sentinel lymph node. Then, doctors would beam the laser into the tissue. When the light from the beam hits the dye, it releases ultrasound waves so doctors can see the dye and thus know where the lymph node is.

Will it work? So far, it's only be tried in rats, and researchers were able to image lymph nodes about 4 centimeters deep -- the typical depth of lymph nodes in breast cancer cases, Philips said.

Agfa Healthcare: Mammo CR comes to the U.S.

Belgian film company Agfa Healthcare was pushing Impax 6.5, the latest update to its PACS workstation, as part of the company's new focus. At a lunch talk with the company's president Christian Reinaudo and other top executives, the firm said its informatics division was seeing 30-35 percent yearly growth. "We must be the leader in PACS," Reinaudo said. Meanwhile, film imaging sales had flat-lined after several years of decline, partly because China, India, Russia and other developing countries were buying film-based stuff even as sales continue to plummet in the developed world.

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