Highlights
04.03.06
Virtual Colonoscopy Ready for Primetime
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its first approval of the use of a 3-D computer visualization technology as a patient screening tool for detecting colon cancer. The technology, invented at Stony Brook, has been licensed to start up Viatronix, Inc., a tenant company in the Long Island High Technology Incubator on the University campus. A groundbreaking virtual colonoscopy study published the preceding December in the New England Journal of Medicine and American Journal of Roentgenology reported that the new colonoscopy diagnostic detected about 93% of intestinal polyps larger than 8 millimeters, while some 90% of such polyps were detected by screening with the more invasive conventional colonoscopy procedure. An editorial in the same issue of the NEJM concluded that, with the demonstration of reproducibility and resolution of a few other questions, "then screening virtual colonoscopy is ready for prime time."