SuperSonic Imagine (Euronext: SSI, FR0010526814), a company specialising
in ultrasound medical imaging, announced today that it will exhibit its
Aixplorer ultrasound system, which measures tissue stiffness
non-invasively, at the Digestive Disease Week conference in Chicago May
4-6. Liver scanning will be performed live on models in SuperSonic
Imagine’s booth #3531. SuperSonic Imagine’s technology reduces the need
for many liver biopsies and enables regular monitoring of liver therapy
and health.
Aixplorer’s ShearWave Elastography mode is used worldwide to visualize
and quantitatively measure (in kilopascals) tissue liver stiffness
across the different stages of fibrosis leading up to cirrhosis. This
precise, non-invasive measurement of liver stiffness (kPa) is shifting
the diagnostic paradigm with potential to change medical procedures for
1 billion people with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and nearly 150 million
with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) – Source World Health Organization.
Liver stiffness increases with the severity of liver fibrosis as a
general rule, making it an important parameter to help physicians
determine what treatment is indicated and when. This technique can also
play an important role in monitoring therapy. Real-time Quantifiable
ShearWave Elastography to measure tissue stiffness is available only on
the Aixplorer ultrasound system.
Traditionally considered the standard for assessing liver fibrosis
severity, biopsy has serious drawbacks including significant incidence
of morbidity, high procedure and hospitalization costs particularly when
complications arise, and clinical shortcomings since fibrosis is
underestimated in 10-30% of the cases. In addition, liver biopsy is also
suboptimal for repeated follow-up exams and often can not be performed
as it is invasive. Liver biopsy procedures are also painful and often
traumatic for patients.
With ShearWave Elastography, physicians can determine quantitative liver
stiffness values in a non-invasive, easy-to-use exam, which can be
safely repeated over time to follow disease progression or regression.
This diagnostic information can trigger and inform medical treatment,
help to evaluate the progress and effectiveness of drug therapy, and
provide regular and previously unavailable imaging monitoring for
complications. When invasive procedures are called for, Aixplorer’s
exceptional image quality has proven highly effective in helping
hepatologists and radiologists conduct ultrasound guided liver
procedures such as needle placement for biopsy and paracentesis.
“We use ShearWave Elastography in our clinic, on a clinical basis, with
around 15 to 20 procedures per week,” said Dr. James Trotter, MD of
Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. “ShearWave
Elastography is done identically to ultrasonography so it’s a very
comfortable and simple exam for the patient and it takes only 30-90
seconds to perform. It gives us a qualitative and quantitative way to
determine the degree of chronic liver injury our Hepatitis C patients
have. We use it on a routine basis to help us make clinical decisions
about how we treat patients and we think that by using this technique,
we can cut down the number of biopsies by about half. In conjunction
with the new therapies available for our HCV patients and using the
SuperSonic Imagine Aixplorer system with ShearWave Elastography to
assess liver stiffness, we have reduced our patient biopsies by 90%.”
According to SuperSonic Imagine CEO Jacques Souquet Ph.D. “Several
clinical studies have concluded that ShearWave Elastography is an
accurate, reproducible technique to assess liver disease. The impact of
ShearWave™ Elastography in liver imaging, both in clinical and economic
terms, cannot be underestimated. This technology will enable a major
shift in patient management.”
About SuperSonic Imagine
Founded in 2005 and based in Aix-en-Provence (France), SuperSonic
Imagine is a company specializing in medical imaging. The company
designs, develops and markets a new generation ultrasound system,
Aixplorer®, with an UltraFastTM platform that can
acquire images 200 times faster than conventional ultrasound systems.
Aixplorer® is the only system that can image two types of
waves: ultrasound waves ensure excellent image quality and shear waves,
which allow physicians to visualize and analyze the stiffness of tissue
in a real-time, reliable, reproducible and non-invasive manner. This
innovation, ShearWaveTM Elastography, significantly improves
the detection and characterization of numerous pathologies in several
applications including breast, thyroid, liver and prostate. SuperSonic
Imagine has been granted regulatory clearances for the commercialization
of Aixplorer® on the main markets. Over the past years,
SuperSonic Imagine enjoyed the backing of several prestigious investors,
among which Auriga Partners, Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners,
Bpifrance, Omnes Capital and NBGI.
For more information about SuperSonic Imagine, please go to www.supersonicimagine.com
Copyright Business Wire 2014