Acuson brings harmonics to Aspen at ACC

Acuson of Mountain View, CA, used last month's American College of Cardiology meeting to announce the availability of its Native Tissue Harmonic Imaging application on the Aspen ultrasound scanner. NTHI previously was found only on the company's super-premium Sequoia echocardiography system.

NTHI is being made available to Aspen owners as part of the Advanced Imaging Option upgrade package. In addition to NTHI, the package includes the company's Delta differential echo amplification technique, which enhances contrast resolution while maintaining image detail.

One week prior to the ACC conference, Acuson introduced at the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine meeting a new high-frequency transducer for breast, small parts, and musculoskeletal imaging. The probe, called 15L8w, is a wide-aperture transducer that can display extremely small abnormal lesions with surrounding normal tissue in a single frame, according to the company.