The West Virginia University (WVU) Heart and Vascular Institute is the first hospital in the country to acquire the Alphenix 4D CT from Canon Medical Systems USA Inc. The system offers an angiography configuration to expand capabilities in interventional procedures and help advance patient care in the community. The configuration pairs the Alphenix Sky + C-arm and Hybrid Catheterization Tilt/Cradle Table for interventional procedures with the Aquilion One/Genesis Edition computed tomography (CT) system, allowing clinicians to efficiently plan, treat and verify in a single clinical setting.

Medical device startup company Filterlex Medical recently completed a series A financing round, raising a total of $3 million for its Captis embolic protection device for reducing the risk of stroke and other complications during catheter-based structural heart procedures. Captis won Best Innovation Award at the EuroPCR 2019 innovation competition in Paris and was awarded a grant of $200,000 by the Jon DeHaan foundation.

Low doses of radiation equivalent to three computed tomography (CT) scans, which are considered safe, give cancer-capable cells a competitive advantage over normal cells in healthy tissue, scientists have discovered. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge studied the effects of low doses of radiation in the esophagus of mice.

On June 30, 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has been designated a qualified provider-led entity (qPLE). This allows Johns Hopkins to develop criteria that meet the requirements of the federal Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) of 2014 when ordering diagnostic imaging tests such as computed tomography (CT) scans, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and nuclear imaging in the emergency department and ambulatory settings.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) announced the 2020 Experiential Learning Program site visit proposal solicitation period. The 2020 Fall ELP submission period is open from Monday July 8, 2019 – Thursday, August 8, 2019, at 12 p.m. EST. The ELP is intended to provide a formal training mechanism for regulatory review staff to visit research, clinical, manufacturing and healthcare facilities to observe how medical devices are designed, developed and utilized.

Elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels in young adulthood may lead to an increased risk of heart disease later in life, regardless of later-in-life exposure to these risk factors, according to research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.