Siemens Healthcare officials announce that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the company’s Virtual Touch imaging ultrasound application – Siemens’ first commercially available implementation of Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) technology. Virtual Touch imaging is a revolutionary way of visualizing tissue stiffness, allowing clinicians to visualize pathology deeper into the body and more clearly than ever before. Using sound beams to gently compress tissue, Virtual Touch imaging displays a map, or elastogram, of relative tissue stiffness within the region of interest. This elastogram provides clinicians with more diverse clinical information and increases diagnostic confidence, improving clinical decision-making for more efficient patient care. Available on Siemens’ premium ACUSON S2000 and ultra-premium ACUSON S3000 ultrasound systems, Virtual Touch imaging demonstrates Siemens’ innovation and competitiveness – two components of the Healthcare Sector’s Agenda 2013 two-year global initiative.

Virtual Touch imaging reduces dependence on user technique, improving inter-operator reproducibility – an important aspect of clinical utility. Precisely focusing the ultrasound beam within the region of interest, Virtual Touch imaging maximizes sensitivity to create a more uniform elastogram. By comparison, existing manual compression techniques apply pressure merely at the skin surface, with uncontrollable stress applied in deeper tissues.

Virtual Touch imaging is cleared for use in abdominal, breast, thyroid, small parts, and musculoskeletal exams. Since 2008, the technology has been commercially available in Europe and Asia, where it has proven to be an extremely valuable tool in the detection, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of cancer, chronic liver disease, and musculoskeletal degeneration and injury. Virtual Touch imaging features an excellent sensitivity to extremely small tissue displacements, which leads to enhanced border definition and improved depiction of lesion size. This sensitivity also helps enable clinicians to identify the stiffest portion of the tissue to enhance targeting of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) and biopsy sampling.

“Siemens is proud to announce the FDA clearance of Virtual Touch imaging technology,” says Jeffrey Bundy, CEO, Siemens Healthcare Ultrasound business unit. “Armed with this powerful visualization tool, clinicians in the United States can now more confidently assess lesion tissue stiffness, further enhancing their diagnostic confidence.”

Redefining the use of ultrasound in the diagnosis, treatment, and therapy of diseases, Virtual Touch imaging is gaining international clinical acceptance, evolving into a new standard of care at an increasing number of institutions.

“Virtual Touch imaging enables the user to avoid the limitations of compression elastography, compressing tissue without any user dependency to provide a higher-quality display of the lesion,” states Dirk-Andre Clevert, section head of the Interdisciplinary Ultrasound Center at Germany’s University Hospital Munich-Grosshadern. The hospital uses ultrasound elastography imaging to examine many of the approximately 20,000 patients who are treated annually at the center.

Siemens Healthcare officials announce that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the company’s Virtual Touch imaging ultrasound application – Siemens’ first commercially available implementation of Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) technology. Virtual Touch imaging is a revolutionary way of visualizing tissue stiffness, allowing clinicians to visualize pathology deeper into the body and more clearly than ever before. Using sound beams to gently compress tissue, Virtual Touch imaging displays a map, or elastogram, of relative tissue stiffness within the region of interest. This elastogram provides clinicians with more diverse clinical information and increases diagnostic confidence, improving clinical decision-making for more efficient patient care. Available on Siemens’ premium ACUSON S2000 and ultra-premium ACUSON S3000 ultrasound systems, Virtual Touch imaging demonstrates Siemens’ innovation and competitiveness – two components of the Healthcare Sector’s Agenda 2013 two-year global initiative.

Virtual Touch imaging reduces dependence on user technique, improving inter-operator reproducibility – an important aspect of clinical utility. Precisely focusing the ultrasound beam within the region of interest, Virtual Touch imaging maximizes sensitivity to create a more uniform elastogram. By comparison, existing manual compression techniques apply pressure merely at the skin surface, with uncontrollable stress applied in deeper tissues.

Virtual Touch imaging is cleared for use in abdominal, breast, thyroid, small parts and musculoskeletal exams. Since 2008, the technology has been commercially available in Europe and Asia, where it has proven to be an extremely valuable tool in the detection, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of cancer, chronic liver disease, and musculoskeletal degeneration and injury. Virtual Touch imaging features an excellent sensitivity to extremely small tissue displacements, which leads to enhanced border definition and improved depiction of lesion size. This sensitivity also helps enable clinicians to identify the stiffest portion of the tissue to enhance targeting of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) and biopsy sampling.

“Siemens is proud to announce the FDA clearance of Virtual Touch imaging technology,” says Jeffrey Bundy, CEO, Siemens Healthcare Ultrasound business unit. “Armed with this powerful visualization tool, clinicians in the United States can now more confidently assess lesion tissue stiffness, further enhancing their diagnostic confidence.”

Redefining the use of ultrasound in the diagnosis, treatment, and therapy of diseases, Virtual Touch imaging is gaining international clinical acceptance, evolving into a new standard of care at an increasing number of institutions.

“Virtual Touch imaging enables the user to avoid the limitations of compression elastography, compressing tissue without any user dependency to provide a higher-quality display of the lesion,” states Dirk-Andre Clevert, section head of the Interdisciplinary Ultrasound Center at Germany’s University Hospital Munich-Grosshadern. The hospital uses ultrasound elastography imaging to examine many of the approximately 20,000 patients who are treated annually at the center.

Mitutoyo America Corp. is planning the opening of the first M3 Solution Center in the northwest United States region, located in Renton, Wash. This new 7,600ft² showroom is located so customers can schedule appointments for product demonstrations and assistance with metrology solutions and application challenges.
 
"Our goal is to provide timely metrology solutions to our customers, in a region that is home to a vast aerospace industry. The benefit of opening this new M3 Solution Center was the accessibility in offering an experienced metrology specialist to our customers that could provide up to date and knowledgeable metrology information for any situation they may encounter", says Jeff Thompson, regional sales manager, West region.
 
The grand opening will be held on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 and the open house will be held on Thursday, July 11, 2013.

People interested in attended should send an RSVP to

Festo will build a state-of-the-art product assembly and distribution center in Mason, Ohio, about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati along the I-71 technology corridor. The new Festo Regional Service Center, which is scheduled to open in 2015, will do double duty as a highly-efficient facility serving U.S., Canadian, and Mexican customers and as a showplace for the effectiveness of Festo automation solutions. Festo U.S. headquarters will remain on Long Island, N.Y.

Ohio was selected as the site for the distribution center because it shortened the average distance to the customers of Festo and thereby will decrease delivery time of products. Plans call for a facility exceeding 170,000ft², a significant expansion over the present facility’s size. The expansion reflects overall North American sales growth. Festo also anticipates expansion of product assembly activities, which will mean that a wider variety of components, electric and pneumatic motion actuation systems, and control platforms will be available to customers with improved lead times. Like the facility on Long Island, the new center will have Foreign Trade Zone status, which makes it faster and more efficient to support customers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico from a central U.S. location.