Conavi Medical yesterday announced the first use of its Novasight hybrid system designed for imaging coronary arteries through both intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomography as part of an investigational trial.
The system was used in its first procedure under a Health Canada Investigational Testing Authorization at Hamilton General Hospital by study co-investigators Dr. Tej Sheth and Natalia Echeverri, the company said.
“The Novasight Hybrid imaging catheter is a deliverable imaging system that is able to rapidly and simultaneously acquire co-registered IVUS and OCT images. In this study, we are collecting the first human images with this novel imaging system to confirm the functionality of the technology in the clinical environment and to help inform future studies. We have been able to identify some early examples of the synergies between these two modalities in our clinical experience so far. Ultimately, hybrid IVUS/OCT imaging has the potential to overcome the limitations of IVUS or OCT alone in accurately characterizing atherosclerotic tissue and in guiding coronary interventions,” Dr. Sheth said in a prepared statement.
Conavi Medical said the technology behind the Novasight system was developed by Toronto’s Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, and that Conavi is commercializing the system.
“The purported advantages of the synergistic information that IVUS and OCT can provide have been highly anticipated in the interventional cardiology community. These cases performed in Hamilton represent the first worldwide clinical use of any system that combines IVUS with OCT on a single catheter. In an era of personalized and precision medicine, we believe that the ability to collect comprehensive imaging data in patients with coronary artery disease provides an important opportunity to generate improved clinical decision-making capabilities for these patients in the future,” prez & CEO Dr. Brian Courtney said in a press release.