Launched the world's fastest 16cm spiral CT Neusoft Medical's interpretation of ultra-high-end CT "evolution"

With the recently released "Action Plan for the High-quality Development of the Medical Equipment Industry (2023-2025)" and a series of strong signals released by top-level policies, the development of the domestic high-end medical equipment industry is entering a new golden stage of development, and the level of innovation is expected to accelerate significantly.

  The reporter learned from the high-end medical equipment company Neusoft Medical that the domestic ultra-high-end CT has made a new breakthrough. The company's latest NeuVizE poch+ stepless series CT is the world's fastest 16cm spiral scanning, breaking the speed limit, equipped with a supersonic platform, overcoming huge centrifugal force, ensuring the rotational stability of the system, and achieving 0.235s limit speed; the industry's only 16cm detector covering spiral scanning, further exerting the advantages of wide-body detectors, can achieve faster and more accurate large-range scanning.

    25 years ago, starting from the development of the first domestic whole body CT by Neusoft Medical, domestic CT achieved a breakthrough from "0" to "1". From the self-developed 512-layer panoramic multimodal CT - NeuViz Epoch in 2020 to climb the "Everest" in the world's ultra-high-end CT field, to this new breakthrough in just three years, the iterative evolution of Neusoft Medical CT products has been further accelerated.

    This also means that Neusoft Medical has achieved an upgrade transformation from following to surpassing on the road of helping the mainland to make up for the shortcomings of high-end medical equipment and accelerate the realization of independent and controllable high-end medical equipment. From climbing "Mount Everest" to bravely entering the "no-man's land" of scientific research and innovation, Neusoft Medical will continue to make efforts in the precision, digitalization and intelligence of high-end medical equipment, and will also deduce a new ultra-high-end CT "evolutionary theory".

From following to leading, firm independent and controllable innovation road

    It can be said that since the day Neusoft Medical was founded, the four words of independent innovation have become the DNA of the enterprise.

    In the eighties of last century, domestic CT equipment was completely monopolized by several multinational companies in the United States, Japan and Germany, which was expensive and the follow-up maintenance cost was extremely high. In 1989, a "foreign" CT purchased for more than 600,000 US dollars in the Affiliated Central Hospital of Shenyang Medical College suddenly failed during operation. Professors Zheng Quanlu and Li Jiadi from Northeast Institute of Technology (now Northeastern University) repaired this "paralyzed" CT with their comprehensive knowledge of computers, electronics, mechanics and other aspects, and greatly improved the performance and reliability of the whole machine. This also made them start to think, can we build China's own CT?

    Neusoft Medical was established in this context. There is no drawing technical data, talents and supply chain resources are seriously lacking, but the company's R & D personnel step by step to gradually master the core technology and manufacturing process of CT equipment. Among them, AP (array processing machine) is a key technology that is strictly sealed and monopolized by foreign countries, and the R & D personnel boldly innovate and replace AP machine with PC, leading the change of global CT technology and becoming the technical direction that major international brands have followed.

    In 1997, Neusoft Medical developed the first domestic single-row CT machine with independent intellectual property rights in mainland China, making China the fifth country in the world that can produce whole-body CT.

    With this vigor, more than 20 years later, on the road to the rise of this large-scale high-end medical device "Made in China", Neusoft Medical people opened the way to the mountains and bridged the water, and continued to launch a variety of "first" products - including China's first double-layer spiral CT, the first 16-layer CT, the first 64-layer CT, the first 128-layer CT, and even the first 256 and 512-layer ultra-high-end CT.

    These "firsts" of continuous iterative evolution not only lead domestic medical imaging equipment to gradually break the international monopoly, but also allow China's CT to step by step from following and running to leading, standing at the forefront of the development of the international ultra-high-end CT field.

    It is understood that NeuViz Epoch+ series CT, the latest NeuViz Epoch+ series CT launched by Neusoft Medical, in addition to further breaking the speed limit and achieving a wider detector, is also equipped with the first deep learning reconstruction algorithm ClearInfinity in China, which can reconstruct more realistic, natural and high-quality images that meet the doctor's senses under low-dose scanning conditions. At the same time, the industry's first 60kV imaging, only 0.1mSv dose, providing safer protection for infants and young children.

    It is worth noting that while becoming faster, safer and more accurate, NeuViz Epoch+ Infinity Series CT has also achieved a new breakthrough in intelligence.

    NeuViz Epoch+ is equipped with a global artificial intelligence platform - NeuAI platform, which realizes the whole process of artificial intelligence application, through A-Eye intelligent positioning, Auto FOV, iCentering and other central technologies, ClearInfinity deep learning reconstruction algorithm, AI coronary analysis and other intelligent software, to create a global artificial intelligence workflow, covering all stages of positioning, scanning, reconstruction and diagnosis, providing stroke, chest pain, General practice solutions such as trauma.

Bravely enter the "no man's land" and continue to invest in large-scale research and development

    Zheng Hairong, director of the National High-performance Medical Device Innovation Center and vice president of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once made an analogy, if the research and development of high-end medical technology and equipment is compared to climbing Mount Everest, in the field of advanced medical devices, China has developed rapidly in recent years, in general, it has now reached the position of "Everest base camp", but international innovation competition is more intense, "from the base camp and then to the peak, even if who walks out 100 meters more, it is not easy." Because it is a no-man's land, oxygen is scarce, physical strength is scarce, this is a no-man's land for scientific and technological innovation."

    Taking the rotational speed as an example, this has always been a hard core indicator for the development of high-end CT, and higher rotational speed often means higher precision imaging capabilities. But when the speed is fast to a certain extent, every 0.01 second increase is a challenge to the physical limit. For more than a decade, the CT speed had been stuck at the bottleneck of 0.25 seconds, until Neusoft Medical innovatively relied on the supersonic platform design and variable speed gyro drive system to successfully break through this limit and increase the CT speed to a new record of 0.235 seconds.

    How does domestic ultra-high-end CT forelook layout "no man's land"? In this regard, Neusoft medical research experts revealed that at present, the main scientific research directions of Neusoft Medical's ultra-high-end CT include: One-beat cardiac imaging under 16cm wide-body scan; Feasibility study on low-dose imaging of patients with abnormal heart rhythm and ultra-high heart rate; One-stop examination of stroke ultra-window patients, tissue window assessment and quantitative scoring of lateral branch circulation; Clinical value of 60kV ultra-low dose scanning for imaging adult chest and infants. At the same time, Neusoft Medical's high-end CT also provides many forward-looking scientific research directions in the fields of 60kV low dose, ClearInfinity deep learning reconstruction algorithm, vascular multi-scanning, and metaverse medical treatment.

    In order to achieve independent control and maintain a leading position, Neusoft Medical has also continued to invest in scientific research and innovation on a large scale. Neusoft Medical's previously publicly disclosed financial data shows that from 2019 to the first half of 2022, Neusoft Medical's operating income was 1.908 billion yuan, 2.459 billion yuan, 2.803 billion yuan and 1.502 billion yuan, respectively; The company's R&D investment in the same period was 408 million yuan, 376 million yuan, 371 million yuan and 171 million yuan, respectively, with an average R&D investment accounting for 16% of the total revenue. At the same time, as of June 30, 2022, Neusoft Medical has a total of 765 R&D personnel, accounting for 25.55% of the total number of employees.

    It is also understood that over the years, Neusoft Medical has always adhered to the innovative concept of "industry-university-research-medicine" in-depth collaboration, and has successively carried out extensive cooperation with Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University, the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Suzhou Medical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other top domestic hospitals, scientific research institutes and testing institutions.

    In the future, it remains to be seen how Neusoft Medical will continue to integrate high-end innovation resources such as hardware, software, and artificial intelligence, actively explore the "no-man's land" of scientific research and innovation, promote the further iterative evolution of domestic CT, and provide the world with more powerful Chinese "imaging power".