Hitachi and ADAC partner to hawk PET

Hitachi Medical will be the exclusive distributor of ADAC Laboratories’ PET systems in Japan, the companies announced late last month. The distribution arrangement expands upon an agreement between ADAC and Hitachi that was struck last year.

The vendors also announced that Hyogo Radiotherapy Center, a cancer treatment facility in Tokyo, has ordered a C-PET system from ADAC—the first PET scanner the Milpitas, CA-based company has sold to Japan.

Hitachi markets ADAC’s Pinnacle3 radiation therapy planning system and its nuclear medicine products, including the Forte dual head gamma camera, molecular coincidence detection with attenuation correction, and Vantage ExSPECT. Hitachi also installs and services ADAC equipment for customers in Japan. Mohamed Elmandjra, ADAC’s vice president of marketing, said the Japanese PET market is poised to grow after PET scans are approved for insurance reimbursement in that country, which ADAC expects this to happen later this year.