St. Jude Medical (St. Paul, MN) has received European CE Mark approval for its ILUMIEN system, which combines optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fractional flow reserve (FFR) technologies on one platform. The first of its kind, the combined system offers physicians advanced physiological and anatomical insight to improve coronary artery disease diagnosis and treatment.
Features of the ILUMIEN system include the company's Medical PressureWire Aeris, a wireless interventional tool that measures FFR to evaluate the severity of blood flow blockages in the coronary arteries, as well as the C7-XR OCT diagnostic imaging technology with Extreme Resolution, an intravascular imaging technology that visualizes and measures important vessel characteristics otherwise not visible or difficult to assess with older intracoronary imaging technologies. The two technologies combine to enable optimization of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) by identifying culprit lesions responsible for ischemia (coronary narrowings responsible for significantly obstructing the flow of blood to a patients' heart muscle) and by providing measurements of lesion dimensions and vessel size and structure.
An additional feature on the ILUMIEN system is a Wi-Box wireless device that enables the system to receive aortic pressure readings data from the catheterization lab wirelessly, offering a cable-free FFR solution.
The C7-XR System with the C7 Dragonfly Imaging Catheter and the PressureWire Aeris were launched in Europe in 2009.
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Posted by Lee Mather
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