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KYOTO, Japan and PRINCETON, N.J., Nov. 11, 2009

Shimadzu Corporation (Kyoto, Japan) and EDDA Technology Inc. (Princeton, NJ, USA) today announced that both parties have entered into a business partnership on X-ray chest CAD systems based on the Radiography System of Shimadzu featuring its direct conversion flat panel detector (FPD) and EDDA’s CAD applications.

This partnership contains both distribution of EDDA’s chest X-ray CAD applications with Shimadzu’s DR system through Shimadzu’s worldwide sales channel and the development of fully new applications integrating Shimadzu’s state-of-the-art application for digital radiography together with EDDA’s sophisticated technology in the field of chest CAD.

Chest X-ray CAD (Computer Aided Detection) is an advanced clinical application aiming the improvement of physician’s detection accuracy of lung nodules by identifying possible nodules efficiently using computer image analysis technology, which will also help to overcome the challenge of workload of physicians in the diagnosis process. Chest X-ray is the most commonly performed radiographic exam accounting for nearly 50% of all imaging tests, and over 70 million chest X-rays are performed yearly in the US.

EDDA is a pioneer in the area of chest CAD application. Its IQQA®-Chest CAD product is already approved by FDA, EU CE and China SFDA, and is sold and used in USA, Europe, China and other countries. The first prospective study on chest X-ray CAD published in peer-reviewed journal showed positive results that suggest the interpretation of chest radiographs for lung nodules can be improved using IQQA®-Chest. Shimadzu will distribute this chest X-ray CAD application with its DR products in worldwide markets (*). Both companies are working together to prepare another innovative new chest CAD application which shall be introduced to worldwide markets in the upcoming years.

“According to the statistics such as those from WHO, ratio of death from cancer in the recent years tends to be decreasing. However, that from lung cancer is remarkably increasing, ” said Mr. Kunimasa Itoh, general manager, marketing dept., medical systems division of Shimadzu Corporation. “Through the partnership with EDDA, who is expert of application development in this field, we will be able to contribute to improving clinical workflow and quality care of patients by providing advanced image diagnosis solutions to aid in early detection of lung lesions.”

“Our partnership with Shimadzu Corporation reflects the increasingly important role that advanced computer application plays in enhancing clinical workflow to be faster, better and more cost-effective,” said Dr. Jian-Zhong Qian, president and CEO of EDDA Technology. “We are pleased to partner with Shimadzu to offer new solutions to the diagnosis and management of potentially life-threatening lung diseases.”

(* Regulatory approval for the distribution through Shimadzu in Japan and other countries are pending as of this moment.)

For further information please contact:

Shimadzu Corporation
Tetsuya Tanigaki
Public Relations Department
tanigaki@shimadzu.co.jp

EDDA Technology
Xiaolan Zeng
Business and Market Development
xzeng@eddatech.com

About Shimadzu Corporation
Founded in 1875, Shimadzu Corporation, a leader in the development of advanced technologies, has a distinguished history of innovation build on the foundation of contributing to society through science and technology. Shimadzu maintain a global network of sales, service, technical support and applications centers on six continents, and have established long-term relationship with a host of highly trained distributors located in over 100 countries.

About EDDA Technology
EDDA Technology, Inc. is an innovative clinical computer solution provider in diagnostic imaging and analysis. EDDA offers a series of new generation software products to enable early detection of diseases, and enhance efficiency and precision in diagnosis and treatment. EDDA’s goal is to deliver, with broad accessibility, advanced information analysis technologies that improve clinical workflow and accuracy. A privately held Delaware corporation, EDDA is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, and has a subsidiary in Shanghai, China. IQQA® is a registered trademark of EDDA Technology. www.eddatech.com

Editor’s Note:
EDDA Technology will be exhibiting in Booth # 9318, and Shimadzu Corporation in Booth #5000, of McCormick Place in Chicago at the 95th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), Nov. 29 – Dec. 3, 2009.

New York , NY, USA, July 8-11, 2009

EDDA Exhibits at ILTS 2009 International Liver Transplant Congress

Boston, MA, US, May 30-June 3, 2009

EDDA Exhibits at American Transplant Congress 2009 to present IQQA®-Liver Advanced Toolset for Fast Volumetry and Pre-& Post-surgical Assessment from Liver MDCT.

Valencia, Spain, May 30-June 2, 2009

EDDA Exhibits at WCTI 2009 World Congress Thoracic Imaging and Diagnosis Chest Disease.

Three scientific publications were presented:

Goo, JM; Park, CM; Lee, HJ; Lee, IS; Kang, MJ; Jin, KN, “Computer-Aided Diagnosis System in the Detection of Malignant Lung Nodules on Chest Radiograph: Effect on Observers’ Performance”, 2nd World Congress of Thoracic Imaging and Diagnosis in Chest Disease, Valencia, Spain, June 2009.

De Boo, D.W.; Uffmann, M.; Bipat, S.; Scheerder, M.J.; Freling, N.J.M.; Schaefer-Prokop, C.M. “Detection of Small Solid Pulmonary Lesions on Digital Chest Radiographs: Could we Profit from Computer-Aided Detection?”, 2nd World Congress of Thoracic Imaging and Diagnosis in Chest Disease, Valencia, Spain, June 2009.

Cakirdas, M; Lhoste Agnes; Daffaud Pierre; Roche Antoine; Brehant Julien; Michel Magalie; Camara Pierre Yves; Michel Jean Luc ” Evaluation of a Computer Aided Detection Software for Pulmonary Nodules on Chest Radiograph”, 2nd World Congress of Thoracic Imaging and Diagnosis in Chest Disease, Valencia, Spain, June 2009.

Miami Beach, US, March 12-15, 2009

EDDA Exhibits at American Hepato Pancreato Billiary Association 2009 to present IQQA®-Liver Avanced Toolset for Fast Volumetry and Pre-& Post-surgical Assessment from Liver MDCT.

EDDA Technology, Inc.

Attend the 94th Scientific Assembly & Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

• MEETING DATES : Nov. 30 – Dec. 5, 2008
• BOOTH NUMBER : East Building – Hall D 203

For more information: http://rsna2008.rsna.org/exhibitor_list.cfm?GROUP=ALPHA

PRINCETON, NJ, July 24th, 2008

     

EDDA Technology today announced the launch of its new release of IQQA®-Liver V1.2, designed to assist physician’s fast assessment of volumetry from liver MDCT. This new release will be featured at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Association for Medical Imaging Management (AHRA) in Denver, CO.

The rapid advances of MDCT technology fuel its abdominal imaging applications. MDCT is playing an increasingly important role not only in characterization of liver and liver lesions, but also in preoperative assessment for live resection and transplantation. To fully realize the value of MDCT scans, quantitative assessment of anatomic volume is mandatory. However, delineation and measurement of various volumes via manual tracing on image slices poses tremendous stress on workload, and suffers from significant inconsistency due to inter- and intra-observer variations.

The new release of IQQA®-Liver focuses on real-time assistive tools and automated workflow for physician’s fast assessment of volumetry of liver, liver lesions, vascular structures, liver segments and lobes from MDCT. Such automated workflow is based upon advanced image analysis algorithms and the real-time interactive design. The system performs automatic anatomic phase registration to allow simultaneous visualization and easy cross-referencing of lesion location and characteristics across the different phases.IQQA®-Liver further provides automated segmentation tools and additional multiple real-time tools for users to interactively separate and label specific liver segments and lobes in 3D.Quantitative measurements are extracted from segmented and labeled volumes instantly

“EDDA strives to provide a new generation of interactive decision/planning aid solutions to physicians for daily clinical practice”, says Dr. Jian-Zhong Qian, President and CEO of EDDA Technology. “Our innovation is for the confidence of both physicians and patients when it comes to accurate and fast information assessment from medical imaging.”

Liver disease is a common and serious problem in the US. There are 25 million Americans afflicted by liver diseases including cirrhosis, hepatitis and tumors.The liver is the second most commonly transplanted major organ after the kidney. In 2005, about 6,500 liver transplants were performed in the United States according to the American Liver Foundation.

IQQA®-Liver has been in clinical use in several luminary Chinese hospitals for liver cancer detection, diagnosis and preoperative evaluation purposes, including Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital in Shanghai, and Shanghai Ruijin Hospital.

IQQA®-Liver can be readily deployed onto existing hospital PACS workstations with EDDA’s proprietary IQQA® Enterprise Engine technologies.

EDDA Technology will be exhibiting the IQQA® Family of Products in Booth #737 at the AHRA Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, from July 27 to 30, 2008. Also featured is IQQA®-Chest Enterprise CAD designed to assist physician’s interpretation of digital chest X-Ray. One recent prospective study published in Academic Radiology(Vol. 15:5, pp. 571-575) demonstrated a sensitivity increase of physician’s nodule detection from 63.8% without IQQA®-Chest to 92.7% with IQQA®-Chest assistance at University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine.

Health Imaging & IT | July 1, 2008 | Special Section: CAD’s Impact on Radiology

By Jonathan Batchelor
Fueled by clinical studies, integration with IT and reimbursement

The integration of computer-aided detection (CAD) software into the day-to-day practice of radiology has witnessed the enthusiastic adoption of the applications for some clinical indications. Mammography CAD, which was first greeted with skepticism and suspicion by radiologists, has since enjoyed a groundswell of support. Lung CAD, thanks to diligent efforts by early adopters, is showing signs that it may be the next area of medicine to embrace widespread utilization of this technology.

According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer is difficult to treat because it is rarely caught in its earliest stages—when treatment options are most effective. As such, only 16 percent of patients diagnosed with lung cancer have a 50 percent chance of living beyond five years.

Given those statistics, a CAD application that can improve the diagnostic certainty of a primary evaluation for lung cancer and automatically track changes in nodule size during follow-up studies should be warmly welcomed by the clinical community. Although the technology was approved by the FDA in 2001 for chest radiography, and in 2004 for CT, it has not yet achieved the support and infiltration mammography CAD enjoys.

However, an ever-growing bibliography of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles demonstrating its efficacy, the integration of applications into enterprise healthcare systems, and reimbursement for its use by more payors signals that the technology may at last be poised for mainstream adoption.

Radiography CAD Gets Results

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A recent prospective study published in Academic Radiology (May 2008) conducted by Edwin J.R. van Beek, MD, PhD, and colleagues in the department of radiology at the Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, provides strong support for lung CAD utilization.

Chest radiography was performed using a Siemens Medical Solutions DR unit on 324 patients for surveillance of metastatic disease with known malignancy. Their exams were interpreted by experienced pulmonary radiologists via the PACS at the facility, and utilized IQQA®-Chest CAD software from EDDA Technology.

The study evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of the radiologists’ diagnostic interpretations with and without the use of CAD. For studies without the assistance of CAD, the radiologists’ diagnostic performance showed a sensitivity of 63.6 percent and a specificity of 98.1 percent. However, with the addition of CAD, the radiologists demonstrated a specificity of 92.7 percent and a specificity of 96.2 percent.

“This benefit [lung CAD utilization] might have important implications, related to the identification of patients for whom therapy is failing or in the identification of early metastatic disease where different treatment regimens are still available,” the authors wrote. “Both observations should result in important management decisions, thus improving overall patient care.”

Hong Kong, China, June 17, 2008

EDDA Technology attended the 4th Hong Kong – Shanghai International Liver Congress (ILC) 2008, which was held on 12th – 15th June 2008 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, Hong Kong, China.

Health Imaging News | May 2, 2008 | Clinical Studies

The interpretation of chest radiographs for lung nodules can be improved using an automated computer-aided detection (CAD) nodule detection system, according to a prospective study published in the May issue of Academic Radiology.

Edwin J. R. van Beek, MD, PhD, and colleagues from the department of radiology at Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, sought to assess the performance of a real-time interactive pulmonary nodule analysis system for evaluation of chest digital radiographic (DR) images in a routine clinical environment.

The researchers used a real-time interactive pulmonary nodule analysis system for chest DR image softcopy reading—IQQA®-Chest from EDDA Technology in Princeton Junction, N.J.—with a PACS in a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer teaching hospital. Patients referred for follow-up of known cancer underwent chest DR, the authors wrote.

The investigators noted that resident radiologists, along with experienced chest radiologists, read the posteroanterior and lateral DR images using a PACS workstation. Subsequently, they applied the CAD program to the posteroanterior DR images, and changes (if any) in diagnosis were recorded.

Van Beek and colleagues performed a follow-up chest radiograph at least six months following the initial examination, or a follow-up CT scan of the chest within three months was performed to establish diagnostic accuracy.

Of 324 DR exams, the researchers performed follow-up imaging for 214 patients (67 percent) according to the parameters available.

Notably, the investigators found lung nodules in the initial group and subsequently in 35 patients (10 percent) without CAD. Using CAD, nodules were found and subsequently confirmed in 51 patients (15 percent), improving sensitivity from 63.8 percent to 92.7 percent.

Van Beek and colleagues said that the nodules were subsequently proved to be malignant in five of the 16 additional cases (31 percent). False-positive readings increased from three to six cases; specificity decreased from 98.1 percent to 96.2 percent, which is not statistically significant. There were 153 true negative cases (71.4 percent), according to the researchers.

The authors also noted that the improvement in reader performance comes with a minimal number of false-positive interpretations.

“The present study demonstrates that the use of a CAD program to assist in the interpretation of chest radiographs can enhance the diagnostic performance of radiologists,” according to van Beek et al.