GE to debut new mini cyclotron

GE Medical Systems will introduce a new cyclotron at next month’s Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting in Los Angeles that is targeted to produce radiopharmaceuticals for individual PET sites. The new cyclotron is called MINItrace and is a smaller version of the Milwaukee vendor’s PETtrace system, which is more expensive but has a higher output that can support multiple PET sites, according to David Hollnagel, director of Americas marketing for GE’s nuclear medicine division.

In addition to MINItrace, GE will also emphasize cardiology and oncology applications for its line of SPECT and PET cameras. On the cardiology side, the company will feature products from GE Marquette that are used in nuclear stress tests, such as treadmills and monitoring devices. GE bought Marquette last year (SCAN 9/30/98).

On the workstation side, GE will demonstrate its Genie workstations running on a new Intel Xeon 450 MHz processor. The company will also show the Expert workstation developed by Elscint’s nuclear medicine division, which GE acquired in November (SCAN 12/16/98). The integration of Elscint employees and products has gone well, Hollnagel said.

GE also plans to introduce a major new technology development at the SNM, but declined to provide details before the conference. The technology is the product of the company’s nuclear medicine R&D relationship with ELGEMS of Israel, Hollnagel said.