Rochester, MN, USA—Resoundant, Inc. announced today that the company has shipped its 2022nd Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) system worldwide – a record high over the course of the company’s history. The system is being sent to a Siemens Healthineers customer in the U.S. and will be installed later this year.
“We’re grateful to all of our partners for helping to expand the footprint of MRE worldwide,” said Michael Kalutkiewicz, Vice President of Global Policy and Communications at Resoundant. “We’re thrilled that more and more patients have rapid access to a noninvasive alternative to liver biopsy for liver fibrosis assessment.”
Resoundant has global distribution partnerships in place with leading MRI manufacturers, including Canon Medical Systems, GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, Siemens Healthineers, and United Imaging. Approximately half of all MRE installations are in the North American healthcare market, and the other half span the globe including Europe, Japan, India, Brazil, South Korea, and China. Many locations that are equipped with MRE can be found at www.resoundant.com/mre-connect.
In recent years, professional societies, and patient advocates have ramped up global efforts to address liver diseases such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Notably, fibrosis stage is the strongest predictor for liver-related mortality and development of other liver-related events. MRE has been recognized as the most reliable noninvasive technology for detecting and staging liver fibrosis and is recommended for use in multiple clinical guidelines. It is used daily in clinical practice as a key biomarker due to its rapid acquisition, diagnostic performance, technical success rate, and wide availability. MRE can be used in a focused way as an extremely low-cost MRI exam.
“We couldn’t be happier with the pace of adoption right now,” said Kay Pepin, Director of Translation Research at Resoundant. “There is so much good validation of MRE and other noninvasive biomarkers like proton-density fat fraction (PDFF) to assess NAFLD and NASH. We think our growth is in direct response to many clinicians asking their imaging sites to ensure access to these key tools.”
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About MR Imaging for Chronic Liver Disease
Quantitative imaging technologies offer powerful capabilities to address the global problem of chronic liver disease. For many patients, MRE can serve as a reliable, less expensive, and safer alternative to biopsy to diagnose and stage liver fibrosis.
The technical advantages of MRE for assessing fibrosis has been well-validated in dozens of studies against paired biopsies, with high degrees of inter-reader agreement and repeatability. MRE technology has also been standardized across various vendor platforms and field strengths and utilize the same quantitative cutoffs regardless of the underlying etiology (viral hepatitis, fatty liver disease, etc.) – making them ideal for clinical practice. The technical success of MRE is not significantly affected by common co-morbidities (i.e., obesity) that can cause failure in ultrasound-based elastography.
About MRE
MR Elastography was invented at Mayo Clinic. It is widely available to clinicians at over 2,000 locations across the globe and is the most accurate MRI technology for staging liver fibrosis. Clinicians and patients can find U.S. locations at MRE:connect (www.resoundant.com/mre-connect). The role of MRE has been increasingly recognized in multidisciplinary clinical guidelines for routine liver fibrosis assessment, particularly in suspected cases of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The American College of Radiology issued Appropriateness Criteria® that identify MRE as the most accurate and applicable noninvasive liver fibrosis exam. MRE is reimbursed via a Category I CPT® code (76391) and is covered by numerous public and private insurance plans.
About Resoundant, Inc.
Resoundant, Inc. is a medical technology company dedicated to improving patient care and diagnosis accuracy by making Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) available around the world. Resoundant is based in Rochester, MN and was founded by Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research, Mayo Clinic physicians and researchers.
For more information, go to http://www.resoundant.com