AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE--(Marketwired - Aug 18, 2015) - SuperSonic Imagine (EURONEXT PARIS: SSI) (FR0010526814), a company specializing in ultrasound medical imaging, today announced the installation of its Aixplorer Ultrasound System at The Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital in Rome, Italy. The Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital is ranked as the number one Italian oncology hospital for the number of patients treated and the number of non-profit clinical trials and ranked third for non-profit drug experimentations performed. It serves as the teaching hospital for the medical school of the Universita' Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, the largest private university in Europe with over 41,000 students across 12 schools. Aixplorer will be used in Internal Medicine & Gastroenterology, primarily for the assessment of chronic liver disease.
The Aixplorer ultrasound imaging system provides real-time data not only on tissue morphology but also on elasticity (stiffness), allowing physicians' greater accuracy of diagnosis. Its built-in UltraFast™ software platform has the ability to acquire images 200 times faster than conventional ultrasound, enabling Supersonic Imagine's proprietary ShearWave™ Elastography (SWE™) technology to quantify tissue stiffness in real time.
ShearWave Elastography is an easy-to-use, non-invasive exam that provides real time, color-coded maps with quantitative measurements of liver stiffness that help assess chronic liver disease. As a general rule, liver stiffness increases with the severity of liver fibrosis, making it an important parameter to help physicians determine disease stage. Liver biopsy has traditionally been considered the gold standard for staging liver fibrosis but this invasive method has major drawbacks, including significant incidence of morbidity, procedure and hospitalization costs, and clinical shortcomings as fibrosis is underestimated in 10-30% of cases1-2.
The accuracy of SWE combined with its procedural convenience has the potential to significantly reduce the number of liver biopsies used for the staging of fibrosis and assessment of cirrhosis. Such a paradigm shift will not only save time and hospital costs but also reduce morbidity and improve patients' quality of life. This technique may also play a significant role in monitoring antiviral therapies used to address health concerns such as hepatitis C.
The adoption of the Aixplorer by the Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital represents a major achievement as it further demonstrates the rapidly growing interest in this innovative technology for the assessment of chronic liver disease. The installation was made possible through the Company's on-going partnership with United Technologies Italy, one of SuperSonic Imagine's Italian distributors.
"I am proud to be one of the first physicians in Italy to provide this superior imaging to our patients with chronic liver disease seen in Internal Medicine & Gastroenterology. This technology will allow fast and precise stiffness evaluation of organs such as the liver," said Prof. Antonio Gasbarrini, Director of Complex Operative Unit of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at The Agostino Gemelli Teaching Hospital.
"We believe the extensive clinical data demonstrating the excellent diagnostic performance of SuperSonic Imagine's ShearWave Elastography for assessing chronic liver disease significantly contributed to the Universita' Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore's decision to adopt the Aixplorer Ultrasound System and we are honored to work with one of the top hospitals in Italy," commented Tom Egelund, President and Chief Executive Officer of SuperSonic Imagine.
1 Sampling error and intraobserver variation in liver biopsy in patients with chronic HCV infection. Regev A, Berho, M, Jeffers LJ, Milikowski C, Molina EG, Pyrsopoulos NT, Feng ZZ, Reddy KR, Schiff ER. Am J Gastroenterol. 2002 Oct;97(10):2614-8.
2 Sources of variability in histological scoring of chronic viral hepatitis. Rousselet MC, Michalak S, Dupré F, Croué, A, Bedossa P, Saint-André JP, Calès P; Hepatitis Network 49. Hepatology. 2005 Feb;41(2):257-64.
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 revolutionary ultrasound system, Aixplorer®, with an UltraFast™ 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, ShearWave™ 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® in the main global 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