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Press ReleasesTeraRecon System Improves Cardiovascular Risk San Mateo, CA--March 8, 2005: TeraRecon, a company providing workstations for advanced image post-processing and analysis, has worked closely with a Boston teaching hospital for the past four years to optimize methods for cardiovascular risk assessment using calcium scoring. The Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Department of Radiology is evaluating coronary artery calcification, aortic calcification, bone density and dimensions of abdominal fat in 4,000 subjects from the Framingham Heart Study and other study populations using TeraRecon technology. “Physicians have often found it difficult to work with and manage data from large patient populations like the Framingham study,” says Udo Hoffmann, MD, the Director of Cardiac CT Research at MGH. “A system that is user-friendly that is designed to easily manage the images and acquired data and also provides easy access and easy handling of patient data, gives us the ability to store the measured results in a database, transform them into statistics and make all easily accessible for later evaluation.” Using the Aquarius Workstation and integrated database capabilities, the researchers combined cardiovascular risk data of the Framingham Heart Study with novel measures of coronary artery calcification such as mineral mass and individual plaque assessment to assess the value and relationship of coronary calcium scores to coronary event risk, therapeutic interventions and Framingham Risk Factors. The Mineral Mass algorithm has been shown by the researchers to provide more reproducible results as compared to the more commonly used Agaston and Volume Score techniques. Ongoing studies will also assess the potential value of combining the results of coronary artery calcium, aortic calcium, and abdominal fat tests to further augment cardiovascular risk assessment. “Diagnostic imaging has the potential to provide powerful new insights into a patients cardiovascular disease location, progression and acuity.” continued Dr. Hoffmann, “In the future, it may become possible to apply similar quantitative techniques to establish the event risk of individual plaques or groups of plaques and incorporate this information into a subjects overall cardiovascular risk profile and treatment.” About TeraRecon, Inc. Contact:
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