by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | March 01, 2023
Siemens Healthineers' Acuson Sequoia Crown and Select Editions for ultrasound can be used to detect potential early signs of liver cancer. (Photo courtesy of Siemens Healthineers)
Siemens Healthineers kicked off the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna this year with the debut of its Acuson Sequoia Flagship Series for ultrasound, which includes the Acuson Sequoia Crown Edition and the Acuson Sequoia Select Edition.
Both are equipped with a new 24-inch BARCO monitor for improving quality, calibration and access management capabilities, as well as a DICOM display standard calibration feature. They also come with an enhanced user interface for better workflow, penetration, and quantitative ultrasound scanning, including a new touchpad. Powering them is Siemens Healthineers' flagship BioAcoustic Imaging architecture, which provides state-of-the-art image enhancement and expanded applications to adapt scanning protocols to each patient’s size and personal characteristics for more accurate diagnoses.
The Crown and Select Editions have an expanded Ultrasound Derive Fat Fraction (UDFF) feature for detecting non-alcoholic fatty liver disease early in nearly any patient’s physical build. The feature will now be available on all its abdominal transducers, including the 9C2, DAX and the most widely used abdominal ultrasound transducer, 5C1.
“Our system is enhancing clinical diagnostic opportunities, and we can address the important topic of NFLD, which is a pre-stage of potentially getting liver cancer, which is a silent killer,” Daniel Frisch, senior vice president of ultrasound for Siemens Healthineers, told HCB News.
UDFF allows clinicians to quickly and noninvasively classify fatty liver disease using a clear cutoff value of >5%, providing a similar clinical utility to the gold-standard magnetic resonance imaging-estimated proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF).
The Crown Edition includes all features, whereas the Select Edition allows providers on a budget to select and deselect features based on their individual care needs and special use cases, including breast, liver and musculoskeletal (MSK), without compromising clinical performance.
“Those editions have the same hardware and software, so there is no performance shortcoming on any system in place,” said Frisch.
Ultrasound is a fast-growing global market and has an estimated growth rate of 6.3%, putting it on track to reach $9 billion by 2026, according to Siemens Healthineers.
The Acuson Sequoia Crown Edition is available worldwide, while the Acuson Sequoia Select Edition is initially available in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
Siemens Healthineers expects to receive the CE Mark for both in the spring 2023. The solutions are FDA-cleared in the U.S., but not yet available there.
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