GE Healthcare is the result of the merger between GE Medical and Amersham Health in Nov. 2004, after GE acquired Amersham Health for 9.5 billion in Oct. 2003. Jeffrey R. Immelt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive of General Electric, said, 'Amersham's diagnostic pharmaceutical and life sciences business will add new, high growth platforms to GE Medical's diagnostic imaging, services and healthcare information technology businesses'. GE Healthcare, a UK company, is a unit of General Electric (NYSE: GE). GE Healthcare is a global leader in medical imaging, diagnostic imaging contrast agents, interventional procedures, healthcare services, and information technology. For more than 100 years, health care providers have relied on GE Medical Systems, now GE Healthcare, for high quality medical technology and productivity solutions. GE Healthcare, headquartered now at formerly seat of Amersham Health in Great Britain, operates facilities around the world. Global Operations include organizations on the Americas, Europe, and Asia, including India, Japan, Korea China, Thailand and Vietnam.

MRI Scanners:

0.2T to 1.0T:
to 1.5T:
to 3.0T:

MRI Contrast Agents:

Omniscan® is a nonionic chelate complex with low osmolality used as a paramagnetic MRI contrast agent. The efficacy of Omniscan® is similar to that of Gd-DTPA. Omniscan® is given intravenously to enhance images of intracranial and spinal lesions where there is abnormal vascularity or an abnormal blood brain barrier. The complex does not cross an intact blood brain barrier so Omniscan® only accumulates in lesions such as neoplasm's and abscesses.

WARNING: NEPHROGENIC SYSTEMIC FIBROSIS Gadolinium-based contrast agents increase the risk for nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) in patients with acute or chronic severe renal insufficiency (glomerular filtration rate less than 30 mL/min/1.73m²), or acute renal insufficiency of any severity due to the hepato-renal syndrome or in the perioperative liver transplantation period.

See also Gadodiamide, and Classifications, Characteristics, etc.

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General Electric (GE) agreed to buy diagnostic systems maker Lunar Corp. for $150m. in March 2000. In 2004/05 it seems that the integration process into GE Healthcare has been completed. (GE Medical Systems and Amersham announced in April 2004 the completion of a share exchange acquisition of Amersham Health by GE. The result of this acquisition is the new GE Healthcare, based in the UK, totally owned by General Electric (GE).

The U.S.-based company developed bone densitometers and scanning machines that measure bone density as a way of diagnosing osteoporosis and other metabolic bone diseases. GE Lunar marketed these products worldwide.
GE Lunar announced a distribution agreement with MagneVu for domestic sales of the MagneVu 1000, a portable MRI device for orthopedic use, under the trade name Applause™.
GE Lunar was the exclusive U.S. distributor of MR-devices manufactured by Esaote S.p.A. These compact in-office MRI™ machines are designed to fit all practice sizes in orthopedic imaging and complete the range of diagnostic imaging systems.

From GE Healthcare;
GE Healthcare has added the Signa HDe 1.5T™, a compact MRI device at an affordable price to its family of MRI products. It has a single electronic cabinet that can be positioned inside the scanner room rather than in a separate equipment room. The Signa HDe 1.5T can be installed in the same physical location as 0.5T MRI systems with minimal construction costs. According to GE, the installation has been simplified to last only 7 days and has a 30 percent smaller footprint than a typical 1.5T system.
The 1.5T Signa™ HDe MRI system is substantially equivalent to the currently marketed GE 1.5T machines. The data acquisition system supports 1, 4, 8 independent receive channels and multiple independent coil elements per channel during a single acquisition series. The gradient specifications of HDe are lower than other GE Signa 1.5T MRI systems, but it can support clinical applications in cardiac and spectroscopy imaging.

(Mn-DPDP) This agent, mangafodipir trisodium, is a hepatocyte specific MRI contrast agent. Manganese is very toxic, so it has to be chelated and put in the form of a vitamin B6 analog, which is taken up by normal hepatocytes to some extent.
Teslascan® was developed in the early 1980's, went through clinical trials in the early 1990's, and was approved in 1997. One problem with assessing the efficacy of this agent is the fact that the phase III trials finished in the early 1990's, and the techniques used for MR today are very different from the techniques used almost a decade ago.
This contrast agent shortens the T1 relaxation time. On T1 weighted pictures it makes a normal liver look brighter. Since metastases, for example, do not generally take up this agent, the contrast between the enhancing liver and the non-enhancing lesions will increase on T1 weighted pictures. It does not have much effect on T2 weighted images.