Royal Philips, a diversified health and well-being company, announced the launching of IntelliSpace Portal 8.0, the latest edition of its advanced data sharing, analytics and visualization platform that helps radiologists detect, diagnose and follow-up on treatment of diseases.

Introduced at the 2015 Radiological Society of North America Annual Meeting (RSNA) in Chicago, IL, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 helps address the changing demands in radiology that result from an increasing prevalence of cancer and its economic toll. It delivers new applications – like fast 3-D quantitative renderings of tumors – in a fully integrated oncology suite to improve diagnostic confidence and patient care.

The oncology suite complements the width and depth of applications that IntelliSpace Portal already offers as a comprehensive, advanced analysis platform. The portal helps clinicians visualize, diagnose, measure disease states and communicate across modalities, with one efficient, automated, and guided workflow. The latest release now boasts more than 68 clinical applications for 7 modalities including CT, MR, Ultrasound, Mammography and iXR.

"Radiology has a unique ability to influence and improve outcomes. Today there is so much data available, but its full potential is not often realized," said Jeroen Tas, CEO, Healthcare Informatics Solutions and Services, Philips. "Advances in digital health technology now allow us to integrate clinical data from multiple modalities and sources and make that data meaningful and quickly accessible to radiologists. Innovations like the new 3-D rendering of tumors in IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 can change the trajectory of a cancer patient's journey to support the best path to treatment."

A key but challenging clinical need for today's radiologists is determining how tumors are reacting to new local image guided treatment approaches, such as tumor ablation and chemoembolization. Currently, this is done by evaluating 1-D or 2-D MRI-images taken after the procedure, which give only limited insight and no quantified information. With the growing interest in finding new 3-D quantification options, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 now includes, as an option for qualified researchers, a quantitative technology (qEASL), which can be used in conjunction with its Multi-Modality Tumor Tracking (MMTT) application. With this technology, researchers can make a specialized analysis of 3-D imaging scans (e.g. CT and MRI) with the aim to enhance measurement of living and dying tumor tissue by giving them a visual indication of how cells respond to therapy. qEASL has been developed in close collaboration with leading clinical scientists at Yale School of Medicine and aims to improve the current standard for cancer treatment follow-ups as defined by the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL).

"Image-guided local tumor therapies are very difficult to evaluate for effectiveness, and traditional methods lack reproducibility and involve some level of guesswork," said Jean-Francois (Jeff) Geschwind, M.D., Chairman, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale School of Medicine. "Redefining and standardizing how we assess this kind of treatment is revolutionary for radiology and the kind of care we can deliver for patients."

IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 features enhanced capabilities and enriched clinical decision support: With the increasing interest in pulmonary care, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 now includes the new CT Lung Nodule Assessment (LNA) application designed for a more efficient and longitudinal workflow, which features a unique risk assessment tool for clinical decision support; Through the Lung Nodule CAD[5], radiologists also have access to the computer-aided detection system for chest multi-slice CT exams; A complete pulmonary solution, IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 also includes applications to aid clinicians in measuring and tracking COPD, detecting pulmonary emboli, and performing calcium scoring; Embedded in the entire cardiac workflow, the MR Cardiac Quantitative Mapping enables fast quantification and analysis workflow for T1, T2, and T2 generated maps to enhance the diagnostic view in cardiomyopathies (disease of the heart muscle); Enhanced capabilities in the Multi-Modality Viewer allow for the review, editing and analysis of Philips iXR and general radiology datasets. MR Smart Display Protocols deliver the best fitting display protocols for each individual patient based on the radiologist's preferred initial viewing layouts; The advanced capabilities of IntelliSpace Portal 8.0 will also assist in complying with Meaningful Use legislation in the US by empowering radiologists to update EMRs easily and share patient information with various organizations such as public health agencies and specialized registries. With enhanced reporting features, radiologists can augment clinical reports with exportable graphs and tables, which can be collated into a single patient report and stored directly on the PACS or RIS.