New Bolton Center
New Bolton High Res imaging
“It’s just thrilling!….From a clinical standpoint we will literally see things we’ve never seen before,” said Dr. Barbara Dallap Schaer about the revolutionary medical opportunities enabled by New Bolton Center’s new robotically driven CT imaging system.
This new technology provides images for diagnosis, preoperative evaluation and planning, and postoperative evaluation.
Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center is the first veterinary teaching hospital to install Equimagine tm, in spring 2016, soon after it was launched at the December 2015 convention of the American Association of Equine Practitioners.
penn imaging
The team includes Barbara Dallap Schaer, VMD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care and Medical Director of New Bolton Center; Dean Richardson, DVM, Charles W. Raker Professor of Equine Surgery; Thomas Schaer, VMD, Senior Research Investigator in the Comparative Orthopaedic Research Laboratory; Kate Wulster, VMD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Diagnostic Imaging; Christopher Ryan, VMD, Large Animal Radiologist; Carole Johnson, RTR, Director of Imaging & Clinical Service, and Kate Minacci.
Richardson explained how the system’s ability to show early signs of stress fractures can help avoid fatal racetrack breakdowns.
Dallap Schaer anticipates eventually analyzing a horse on a treadmill, thus providing the first images of joints under load. This can answer questions about “what are the joints doing, what mechanics are going on?”
Dr. Thomas Schaer expects immense translation of this technology to human medicine. Its design enables scaling it down for small animals or children, and even infants could be scanned without anesthesia.
The pair of robotic arms can be mounted on the floor, or ceiling. The X-ray emitter is on one arm. Its movement is coordinated with the other arm’s receiver. This configuration enables veterinarians to scan a horse’s entire body, due to the ability of the pair of arms to move over, under and around the standing horse. The horse’s normal posture and alignment with gravity produces images that are more physiologically accurate and informative.
This new technology’s speed, mobility and resolution improves over the existing CT scan process, which is limited to the parts of the animal that can fit inside a donut-shaped scanner. In order to have the horse horizontal and immobile, the necessary anesthesia adds cost, risks and time.
Yiorgos (George) Papaioannou, Ph.D. invented and patented this robotic scanner, and is CEO of 4DDI.
This imaging system can produce two and three-dimensional images with the patient standing. For a 3D model of bone, the system captures 950 radiographic images, in 30 seconds. Then the computer reconstructs a model of the bone, and corrects for the horse’s movements. See Equine4ddi.com/gallery for examples of 3D and moving images.
This single 4D mobile medical imaging solution replaces multiple existing products. Thus significantly reducing the product cost/price. Modes available in one device include: computed tomography (CT), digital radiography (DR), 360-DR, single and dual fluoroscopy, and tomosynthesis.
New Bolton Center is helping to refine the technology and develop new and novel ways of using this system.
http://www.vet.upenn.edu/veterinary-hospitals/NBC-hospital/services/imaging/equimagine-imaging
Susan Bayard Rifkin wrote a book analyzing Robotics patents in 1982. Her article, about using integrative medicine for her horse, Richie, after Dr. Barbara Dallap’s 1999 life-saving resection surgery, won an AHP award. SusanBayRifkin@aol.com