GE HealthCare is raising the curtain on its spearhead into the field of photon-counting CT, the Photonova Spectra, with an announcement that the system has been submitted to the FDA for review.
The company said the scanner will serve as the first in what it describes as the next generation of the imaging approach, which seeks to provide greater contrast and ultra-high-definition resolution by directly measuring the energy of individual X-rays.
Built on the Deep Silicon detector technology GE HealthCare acquired through its purchase of Prismatic Sensors five years ago, the Photonova Spectra system aims to capture up to 50 times more data compared to some of the company’s current premium CT models.
“Today marks a transformative leap for GE HealthCare and a bold new chapter in CT innovation,” GE HealthCare President and CEO Peter Arduini said in a statement. “Photonova Spectra is more than a new product—it’s a demonstration of what’s possible when vision meets purposeful design.”
The scanner is designed to enable a “universal scan approach,” GE HealthCare added, with automatic patient positioning to simplify workflows across medical specialties, including cardiac exams, cancer assessments, brain scans and musculoskeletal imaging.
Related
According to GE HealthCare, the use of silicon semiconductors provides a pure and consistent, yet abundant, material for the construction of its detectors—with each module containing 4,800 sensor elements. The company described its mass as equivalent to a Mini Cooper, spinning around a patient four times per second.
Photon-counting CT represents part of a broader R&D strategy at the company, which has invested $3 billion in the enterprise since 2022, after splitting off from the GE mothership and becoming an independent company in January 2023.
That has included projects in hardware development as well as artificial intelligence and cloud solutions—essential to managing the dramatic increase in data generated by photon-counting CT—which is being tackled through a computing partnership with Nvidia.
“Accelerated computing and AI are the essential engines driving the transformation of medical imaging today, moving us from passive data capture to active, intelligent clinical workflows,” Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s VP of healthcare, said in a statement. “By working on the technology’s development and pursuing opportunities to pair GE HealthCare’s Deep Silicon architecture with Nvidia’s Blackwell platform in the future, we aim to unlock the full potential of spectral imaging—turning massive volumes of data into actionable insights.”
Related
Set to be on display at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago next week, the Photonova Spectra will also receive billing alongside the company’s introduction of its cloud-first radiology workspace, Genesis.
The Genesis View enterprise diagnostic reading software, which is also pending a 510(k) clearance at the FDA, aims to allow clinicians to work from virtually anywhere, with 2D and 3D visualizations and AI tools.
This month GE HealthCare also outlined a $2.3 billion deal to acquire the software developer Intelerad to support the company’s goal of becoming more of a digital solutions provider with a cloud platform that can span ambulatory, teleradiology and hospital settings.