GE launches compact gamma camera dedicated to cardiology applications

Millennium MyoSight slips into small spaces

The nuclear medicine community has a new gamma camera. The GE Millennium MyoSight debuted Sept. 26 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology in Baltimore. The compact system, which is dedicated to cardiology, is designed specifically for freestanding clinics and other locations with limited space.

Detectors built into the dual-head, variable-angle camera offer a 14.1 x 20.1-inch field-of-view. The system fits in a 110-square-foot area, and the camera can be installed within two days using regular elevators and doorways, according to the company.

Millennium MyoSight can perform all supine and prone cardiac procedures, including 180° and 360° SPECT studies, planar-gated blood pool, and gated SPECT perfusion with attenuation correction.

Detector heads are suspended on arms that extend from the gantry, providing an open scanning environment. The table supports patients weighing up to 440 pounds.

Millennium MyoSight is built around GE's digital Correlated Signal Enhancement detector technology, which utilizes square photomultiplier tubes. The unusual design of the tubes optimizes detection of scintillation events, according to the company, thereby boosting image count rate and uniformity. PMTs are automatically adjusted using calibration algorithms. A 101° detector geometry enhances scanning sensitivity by placing the detectors close to the patient.

Users may generate an anatomically specific correction map using the camera's Millennium Acuscan option. Two gadolinium line sources, one mounted on each of the detectors, move in synch with the scan steps, providing patient transmission attenuation maps. When used with GE's iterative reconstruction algorithms, these maps minimize attenuation artifacts and improve the clinical diagnostic ability to identify myocardial perfusion uptake defects.