• Cordis Endovascular (Baltimore), a division of Cordis (Miami Lakes, Florida), reported the worldwide launch of the Cordis Aviator Plus balloon dilatation catheter for use in angioplasty procedures for patients with carotid and or renal artery blockages. Aviator combines a high-pressure expansion and low-profile .014-inch rapid exchange or single operator system that facilitates procedural speed and efficiency by enabling fast inflation and deflation times. Aviator features include a sleek (<.90mm) manicured tip, 3.3 french shaft, and modified Duralyn balloon material on a 4 french system. It is available in 4mm-7mm diameters and 1.5cm-4cm lengths on 142cm shafts. Cordis Endovascular makes technologies for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease.

• Emageon (Birmingham, Alabama) reported the introduction of its new RadSuite Express solution for the fast growing small to mid-sized hospital and clinic market. With this turn-key solution, facilities producing less than 80,000 radiology studies a year will now be able to install and start using a PACS in days. Emageon is rolling out a simplified Web-enabled, single-server solution based on Dell technology. Dell’s e-commerce capability greatly simplifies purchasing and will allow customers to quick-start their PACS operations through Emageon. Emageon provides enterprise medical information technology systems for hospitals and healthcare networks.

• VisEn Medical (Woburn, Massachusetts) reported the market launch of its MMPSense molecular imaging probe for real time imaging of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) related activities in vivo. By imaging and quantifying disease-related biological activities and therapeutic interventions in vivo, VisEn technology platforms enable expanded areas of research, increasingly efficient drug development, and advanced personalized clinical medicine into the future. The probe, developed from the company’s proprietary fluorescence imaging probe platforms, is an activatible in vivo fluorescence probe capable of imaging MMP activity in tumors and other sites of inflammation in vivo. In its non-active state, the probe is not fluorescent, but it emits strong fluorescence in response to MMP activity in vivo. According to the National Cancer Institute, MMPs are a group of enzymes that can break down proteins, such as collagen, that are normally found in the spaces between cells in tissues (i.e., extracellular matrix proteins). It is known that MMP activity is involved in many disease-related phenomena, including cancer propagation, invasion and metastasis, inflammation, host response, and in areas of cardiovascular disease. VisEn Medical specializes in fluorescence imaging technologies.