Varian Medical Systems announced in July that Varex Imaging Corporation will be the name for its imaging components business upon the completion of the planned spin-off of that business as a new, stand-alone public company via a tax-free distribution to Varian stockholders in a transaction anticipated to be completed by the end of calendar year 2016.
The Varex Imaging name will draw from the 65-plus years of technology leadership and strong industry brand recognition of Varian and its reputation in X-ray imaging technology. As an independent company, Varex Imaging will pursue new growth strategies by leveraging its position as a global leader in components, software and services for expanded imaging applications and markets.
Varian Imaging Components president Sunny Sanyal, who will assume the role of CEO of Varex Imaging upon completion of the spin-off, stated, ‘As a trusted imaging components partner, we have a laser focus on providing our customers with high-quality and cost effective products that enable them to develop and deliver new next-generation imaging systems. Excellence in imaging is a top priority and this is evident in the new company name.’
Varian Imaging Components is a leading global supplier of components, software and engineering services for imaging equipment manufacturers and system integrators in the medical diagnostics, dentistry, veterinary care, security and industrial inspection industries. It manufactures X-ray tubes, high energy X-ray sources, flat panel image detectors, connectors, collimators and image processing software; all key components of X-ray imaging systems. The planned spin-off of Varian Imaging Components is subject to numerous conditions, including final approval by the Varian Board of Directors, effectiveness of a Registration Statement on Form 10 to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and receipt of an opinion of counsel regarding the federal income tax treatment of the spin-off.

www.varian.com

A quick, reliable and cost-effective mobility assessment tool may help to identify elderly patients at risk for adverse post-surgery outcomes, according to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers.
In their study of 197 men and woman over age 69 who underwent elective, non-cardiac, inpatient surgery at Wake Forest Baptist over a 20-month period, the researchers found that the participants’ preoperative scores on the Mobility Assessment Tool: Short Form (MAT-sf) were predictive of early postoperative complications, longer hospital stays and discharges to nursing homes.
‘Preoperative assessment of patient characteristics that may lead to adverse postoperative outcomes is important to patients, their families and their surgeons, especially with older adults, in whom complications are more likely,’ said Leanne Groban, M.D., professor of anesthesiology at Wake Forest Baptist.
‘Mobility is a powerful indicator of overall health in the elderly, and our results indicate that self-reported mobility, as measured by the MAT-sf, can complement existing assessment tools in determining which patients are at risk of adverse postoperative outcomes.’
The MAT-sf features animated video clips of 10 common physical activities, each followed by questions about the participant’s ability to perform the particular task. In addition to the MAT-sf, participants in the study also underwent four other commonly employed preoperative risk assessments. After controlling for factors such as the participants’ age, sex and body mass index and their scores on the other tests, the researchers found that low (poor) scores on the MAT-sf were associated with short-term complications, later time to discharge and increased nursing home placement to a greater degree than any of the other indicators.
‘The traditional risk assessments may be too comprehensive, too focused on single organ systems or too impractical to be effective in this setting,’ Groban said.
The next steps, she said, are to validate these findings in a larger, multi-centre study and to test whether preoperative strength and balance training might limit undesirable postoperative outcomes in older adults with mobility limitations.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centerhttp://tinyurl.com/jxd3bsp

If there is a technical exploration of the human body that the physician practice in any medical examination to diagnose or prescribe additional tests, it is palpation. The brain, however, has the distinction of being not possible to feel without a very invasive procedure (opening of the skull) reserved for rare cases. Drawing on seismology, researchers from Inserm led by Stefan Catheline (Inserm Unit 1032 ‘Applications of Ultrasound therapy’) have developed a non-invasive method of imaging of the brain by MRI which gives the same indications as physical palpation. A term may be used for early diagnosis of brain tumours or of Alzheimer’s disease.
The Inserm researchers have managed, via MRI to detect natural brain shear waves using computational techniques borrowed from seismologists and known as ‘noise correlation.’ They were able to draw of brain elasticity image.
‘If this method can be developed in the clinic, it would be both a comfort for the patient and the doctor because today vibrating the brain is painful enough. Of course, this method will be complementary to the existing ones and the future is a multimodal medical diagnosis, ‘says Stefan Catheline, Senior Research Director Inserm author of this work.
‘Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, hydrocephalus involve changes in the hardness of brain tissue. This new technique could detect those changes and be used to prevent brain biopsies.’
This method of brain palpation could have other application areas such as the analysis of the development of neurodegenerative processes, the impact of a traumatic injury or tumour, or the response to treatment.

INSERM http://tinyurl.com/zhyjj9x

Piezoelectric materials turn mechanical stress into electrical energy, and vice versa. In 1997, researchers developed piezoelectric materials that were 10 times better at coupling electrical and mechanical responses than prior state-of-the-art materials. But even scientists did not understand why the newer materials were so responsive.
Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their research partners have used neutron scattering to discover the key to piezoelectric excellence in the newer materials, which are called relaxor-based ferroelectrics. (A ferroelectric material has electrical polarization that is reversed by application of an electric field.) Their findings may provide knowledge needed to accelerate the design of functional materials for diverse applications.
Relaxor-based oxide ferroelectrics have revolutionized piezoelectric devices. In medical ultrasound, for example, the mechanical pressure of sound waves generates images of a person’s interior. Compared with the performance of traditional materials, the stronger response of relaxor-based ferroelectrics yields a more detailed electrical signal that produces better images. Instead of having somewhat blurry guidance from 2D images to diagnose a cause of pain, assess prenatal condition, guide a biopsy or assess damage after a heart attack, doctors now rely on finely detailed 3D imagery. These modern materials also made it possible to focus ultrasound waves for non-invasive medical treatments of conditions such as tumours or gallstones. This technology passes individual beams harmlessly through tissue; the beams converge on a target where their effects are concentrated, like light passing through a magnifying glass to ignite paper.
‘We figured out at an atomic level why certain materials are so great at mechanically responding to an electric field by changing shape or size,’ said lead author Michael Manley of ORNL. ‘The finding provides a basis for high-performance actuators and sensors.’ Compared to traditional polycrystalline materials, the newer piezoelectric crystals generate a greater mechanical force in response to an applied electric field.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://tinyurl.com/j57s466

Scientists at the University of Exeter have developed a pioneering new technique that could revolutionise the surgical treatment of epilepsy.
The team of scientists, led by Dr Marc Goodfellow and Professor John Terry, have developed the ground-breaking new method that can identify the specific regions of the brain that trigger seizures in people with epilepsy.

The new technique is designed to help surgeons and neurologists measure the relative contribution to the occurrence of seizures made by different brain regions, and so determine which regions to remove to have most benefit to the individual.

At present, people with epilepsy are treated initially through medication, which aims to dramatically reduce or remove the threat of seizures. However anti-epilepsy drugs prove ineffective in around one-third of people. In these cases, patients can elect to undergo surgery to remove small parts of the brain – which does not impact healthy brain function – but which can help reduce the chance of experiencing seizures.
Surgeons record electrical activity from the surface of the brain and study the electrical rhythms to attempt to identify the brain regions where seizures begin. However, current approaches are only partially effective with around 50% of people with epilepsy seeing significant long-term improvements following surgery.
The new method devised by the scientists, which used state-of-the-art mathematical modelling procedures, can more accurately distinguish the brain regions that are the source of seizure activity from those that become involved as a result of a seizure starting.

Professor Terry, Director of the EPSRC Centre for Predictive Modelling in Healthcare and an expert in Biological Modelling from Exeter’s Mathematics department said: ‘This research has the potential to dramatically improve surgical success rates for those patients who need it, and so also dramatically improve their quality of life.

‘The potential is truly outstanding. It gives surgeons valuable information on how different brain regions contribute to seizures, enabling them to predict the outcome of different surgical strategies and so better plan surgery.
‘Imagine someone was in a theatre and sending text messages to random audience members, making their phones ring. Current techniques are in essence akin to removing those people who receive the messages – they are contributing to the disruption and so removing them could make a difference. But clearly it would be better to identify and remove the individual sending out the messages – the original source. That is what our methods achieve – identifying the original source.’

University of Exeterwww.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_527678_en.html