Industry hopes to piggy-back abbreviated NDAsAnger has turned to action as the PET community struggles to cometo grips with federal initiatives that threaten to hamstring themodality. PET practitioners have launched a major effort to comeinto

Fonar has notified other vendors of its claimsFonar's assertion of MR patent claims is threatening to expandinto a legal imbroglio involving the entire MR industry. SiemensMedical Systems became the latest vendor to be dragged into

German multimodality vendor Siemens has appointed Hermann Requardt as general manager of itsMR division, effective in January. Requardt replaces Tom Miller,who returned to the U.S. last year when he was appointed vicepresident of imaging systems at the

Seattle site is first in national networkFast CT developer Imatron this month opened its first HeartScanImaging clinic in Seattle to provide coronary artery disease riskassessment studies. The clinic is the first in what Imatron hopeswill be a

Researchers to use high-field NT scannerPhilips Medical Systems is taking a different approach to interventionalMR. Rather than introduce an open-style scanner like its competition,the Dutch vendor is planning to investigate interventional

Vendor has not committed to debut dateSiemens Ultrasound is readying its long-awaited successor to thehigh-performance Quantum 2000 ultrasound scanner. Contrary topublished reports, however, the company has not settled on a productintroduction

OEM ties give new company a head startQuickSilver Systems is showing how fast and far a few well-chosenOEM relationships and a wellspring of experience in medical imagingcan propel a new company. The San Jose, CA-based PACS component start-up

Toshiba America, the parent of Toshiba America Medical Systems, has gone on-line with a company-widehome page on the Internet's World Wide Web. Internet surfers canget information about TAMS and other companies in the ToshibaAmerica group by accessing

Call it a sad commentary on the state of the medical imaging market: Fidelity Medical hasexited the industry in favor of greener pastures in retail stationery.The Florham Park, NJ, company this month announced that it hassold its x-ray digitization

Ultrafast CT developer Imatron has revised its product development and distribution agreementwith Siemens, the South San Francisco, CA, company reported lastweek. Under the terms of the new deal, Siemens will contribute$15 million toward a three-year

DICOM provides fertile ground for sales growthPACS companies are jockeying for position in the race to takeadvantage of an impending boom in purchasing interest. Interfacefirm Merge Technologies moved itself a little closer to the insiderail

This year's American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine meeting in San Francisco found the diagnosticultrasound industry in a transition phase. By most accounts, theindustry has bottomed out from the drop in new scanner purchasingexperienced in 1993 and

Philip Smith, vice president of Toshiba ultrasound business operations, has left the company,the Tustin, CA, vendor said last week. Smith's last day with Toshibawas April 3. Smith joined Toshiba in 1987 as business manager of x-ray afterserving as

Acquisition-minded defense firm E-Systems found itself on the other end of a buyout offer thismonth. The Dallas company, which spent much of the past two yearsaccumulating PACS and archiving firms, has agreed to be acquiredby fellow defense contractor

Siemens Medical Systems has become the second gamma camera vendor to win Food and DrugAdministration 510(k) clearance for a nonuniform attenuation correctionproduct. Siemens' Hoffman Estates, IL, nuclear medicine grouplast month got the FDA's imprimatur

Philips Ultrasound is moving forward in its R&D program for Color Velocity Imaging-Quantification(CVI-Q), the vendor's unique non-Doppler method for quantifyingblood volume flow. Ten papers will be presented on CVI and CVI-Qat this week's American

Agfa is experiencing strong demand for its Impax PACS components, the Ridgefield Park, NJ,company reported last week. The company's total PACS sales inits electronic imaging division exceeded $12 million in the firstquarter of 1995, according to Vishal

Urology equipment manufacturer Direx Medical Systems is planning to enter the MR market withMarex, a low-field magnet shown for the first time at this month'sEuropean Congress of Radiology meeting in Vienna. Marex is a 0.1-tesla permanent magnet

Siemens and Picker are developing similar programsThe multivendor service deal forged this month between GE HealthCareServices and the Columbia/HCA hospital chain has other scannervendors shaking their heads. GE's competition is examining

3M has enhanced the functionality of its Image Management System PACS product by adding the abilityto send ultrasound images over a DICOM 3.0-compatible network.The St. Paul, MN, company will display the new capabilities atthis week's American Institute