Albany, NY – (May 15, 2013) Virtual Phantoms, Inc. today announced the successful conclusion of beta testing for its revolutionary radiation dose exposure software, VirtualDose™CT. The testing was conducted at 10 major U.S. hospitals over the past 6 months as part of a “fast-track” STTR project with The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to determine whether the product is performing to the level of accuracy and ease-of-use required by medical physicists and radiologists.
According to company officials, the reactions to the product were very positive and Virtual Phantoms Inc. will now finalize the software for commercial release in either 2013 or 2014.
VirtualDoseCT is a solution to the growing problem of optimizing radiation dosage during CT examinations. The state-of-the art for many years has been to use an “average” human body model to determine radiation exposure doses. But such models do not allow for the dramatic differences in size and shape for children at different ages, for pregnant women at different gestational levels, or for obese individuals of all ages.
The new software uses a well-tested family of body 3D models, known as “phantoms,” along with sophisticated simulation software, to get a more precise dose mapping for each organ in a broad range of body types.
“American Board of Radiology has called for better ways to manage radiation exposure from CT imaging and to further improve patient safety,” explained Dr. George Xu, professor of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a fellow of American Association of Medical Physicists, American Nuclear Society, and Health Physics Society, who served as the principal investigator of the project. “Supported by the NIH as “fast-track” STTR project confirmed our belief that solutions offered by VirtualDoseCT were considered by the NIH as a national priority in addressing the needs for CT dose management because the software is designed to allow radiologists and medical physicists to ultimately optimize CT imaging at the organ dose level, instead of traditional dose indices that unrelated to specific patient.”
Although CT imaging has been proven extremely effective as a diagnostic tool, repeated exposure to ionizing radiation is known to associate with a potential risk of adverse effects. In light of rapidly increasing use of CT scanners in recent years, national and international organizations have issued warnings about the consequences of unjustified CT radiation doses and, in the U.S., California and Texas have passed the first laws requiring hospitals to record the CT radiation dose for each patient. To address the growing problem, American Board of Radiology (ABR) has launched two public campaigns called “Image Wisely” and “Image Gently.”
“The trend toward increasing regulation in CT exposure is expected to accelerate in the near future. Tools such as VirtualDose are essential,” Dr. Xu explained. “We are now moving rapidly to ready the product for the marketplace.”
VirtualDoseCT was developed under a strategic consortium with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the University of Florida (UF) using their “virtual patients” technologies derived from research activities previously funded by NIH and other agencies. The overall goal of this project has been to develop VirtualDoseCT for radiologists, radiological technologists, medical physicists, regulators, manufacturers and researchers who need to calculate and analyze patient radiation doses from x-ray computed tomography (CT) examinations. solves the need for accurate CT X-ray radiation dose tracking and reporting by providing anatomically correct 3D patient modeling.
Virtual Phantoms, Inc. (VPI), www.virtualphantoms.com, was founded in 2009 by faculty members from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in collaboration with the University of Florida, using the “Virtual Patient” technologies developed from nearly 20 years research at RPI and UF in the field of nuclear and radiological engineering. Combining a large collection of anatomically accurate models of patients of various ages and sizes and sophisticated “Monte Carlo” simulation methods originally developed for nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos in the 1940s, VPI is recognized as a world leader in the modeling of ionizing radiation, radiation safety, and medical/occupational radiation dosimetry.
