GE Healthcare launches vehicle with bone mineral density scanning providing care to more patients, clinics and rural areas in the Middle East

This newly available technology will help expand the reach of healthcare to more patients while making diagnostic tools more accessible to physicians and clinicians in the region. This is GE Healthcare's first offering of its "fan-beam" x-ray bone densitometer technology in a mobile van using Dual-Energy X-ray Absorbtiometry, or DEXA scanning, to measure and calculate bone, fat and muscle mass.

DEXA scans are considered the "gold standard" for physicians to detect and diagnose skeletal diseases, including osteoporosis, as well as to perform vertebral imaging.¹ The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) reports that osteoporosis causes fractures in one in three women over the age of 50 worldwide.²

Furthermore, in the Middle East and North Africa the IOF suggests that osteoporosis represents a heavy financial burden as healthcare costs increase in the fast growing region.³ GE's DEXA systems also enables licensed healthcare professionals to simultaneously assess body composition and ascertain fat distribution in adults.

The Mobile Prodigy contains the same features as the Lunar Prodigy to detect low bone mass and increased risk of fracture, with direct digital technology, precision and accuracy.

"Rather than the patient driving farther for BMD and body composition testing, we can bring these advanced health care technologies closer to the patient's home," said Laura Stoltenberg, general manager of GE Healthcare's Lunar business. "This mobile DEXA system can deliver the benefits of BMD patient care to smaller, rural hospitals and clinics that don't have a dedicated system."

GE Lunar also use unique technology to help physicians measure BMD in children, as well as systems to enable licensed medical practitioners to simultaneously assess body composition and ascertain fat distribution in adults.

GE Pediatric BMD Assessment
Pediatric bone mineral density assessment can be challenging for physicians to monitor over time, because the skeleton of a child is growing simultaneously during the timeframe of monitoring. GE Lunar features enhanced enCORE software for its DEXA systems that allows physicians to measure a child's bone density, fat and lean tissue mass composition, by factoring in and trending the child's age, height and other variables. This enables the physician to separate out the child's growth from other changes to the size and density of the skeleton.


GE-Exclusive Body Composition Measurements and Calculations:
GE Lunar iDXA and Prodigy DEXA systems measure and calculate bone, fat and muscle mass for body composition analysis. Separate from BMD assessment, a new Body Composition Software system can help people and their physicians establish goals for weight loss, exercise and diet regimes. DEXA body composition is a useful alternative to hydrostatic weighing and skin fold measurements.

Lunar systems
• Measure the regional and whole body BMD, plus lean and fat tissue mass.
• Calculate derivative values that can be displayed in user-defined statistical formats and trends with color image mapping, and compared to reference populations at the sole discretion of the health care professional.

These body composition values are useful to licensed medical practitioners in their management of diseases and conditions where the disease and condition itself, or its treatment, can affect the relative amounts of patient fat and lean tissue. This GE Lunar Body Composition Software option does not diagnose disease, or recommend treatment regimens, or quantify treatment effectiveness. Only the licensed medical practitioner can make these judgments. Some of the diseases/conditions for which body composition values are useful include chronic renal failure, anorexia nervosa, obesity, AIDS/HIV and cystic fibrosis.

Lunar iDXA software also gives physicians dedicated reporting for body composition measurements and high percentage color fat mapping. Patients can easily follow the report divided into three compartments: lean mass, total body tissue percent fat, and bone density