KNOXVILLE, Tenn., April 15, 2003 – CTI Molecular Imaging, Inc.(Nasdaq: CTMI) and Medical Coaches, Inc., a privately held firm based in Oneonta, NY, announced today they have completed the manufacture and sale of the industry’s first ever mobile PET/CT unit, which utilizes CTI’s REVEAL ® RT PET/CT scanner.
“The REVEAL RT scanner is a major health care advance that allows medical specialists to see both the structure and molecular activity of various diseases and health disorders,” said Terry Douglass, PhD, chairman and chief executive officer of CTI Molecular Imaging. “Working with us, Medical Coaches has helped improve patient access to this beneficial test. Mobile imaging providers now will be able to offer this technology to smaller medical sites that previously did not have the scale or financial resources to provide this service. With our joint development of the first mobile PET/CT, CTI and Medical Coaches have opened up a new market of PET/CT customers.”
“Because of the PET/CT unit’s size and sensitivity to motion, standard trailer platforms used for other mobile medical services wouldn’t work,” says Chad Smith, Medical Coaches director of marketing for mobile MRI and PET systems. “We developed a proprietary design system utilizing aircraft construction principles that allowed us to build a coach that maintains the PET/CT unit’s stability and alignment.”
Other mobile units are under construction, Smith said, and order fulfillments for mobile PET/CT units will be 90 to 120 days from the time of booking. Medical Coaches, Inc. is ISO-certified.
About CTI:
CTI Molecular Imaging, Inc. is a leading supplier of products and services for positron emission tomography (PET), a diagnostic imaging technology used in the detection and treatment of cancer, neurological disorders and cardiac disease.
About Medical Coaches:
Medical Coaches, Inc., is a family-owned business that has manufactured more than 20,000 highly specialized mobile medical units located in more than 100 countries It was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Oneonta, NY.
About PET and PET/CT:
PET images the biology of diseases at the molecular level often before anatomic changes are visible or, in some cases, before symptoms appear. Diseases are biological processes and it is these processes that PET examines. PET/CT is a new imaging technology that combines the biological examination of patients by PET with the CT images of the body’s structural detail. PET/CT technology improves the treatment management of patients by providing surgeons, radiation therapists and other physicians precise anatomical landmarks associated with the disease condition as determined by PET.
PET’s whole-body imaging capability helps physicians improve their ability to determine the location, extent and stage of cancer, neurological disorders and cardiac disease. By improving diagnosis, PET scans aid physicians in selecting better courses of treatment, as well as assessing whether treatment is effective or should be changed. Recent published clinical trials have shown that in a wide array of cancers, the use of PET has caused the treatment to be changed for 15 to 50% of patients, depending on the specific clinical question. In addition, PET and PET/CT provide both the patient and their physician with a degree of certainty that is often unavailable through other imaging methods.