Hyperfine has announced the presentation of new stroke patient follow-up data regarding the use of the Swoop system—which it claims is the world’s first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared portable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system—at the 2023 International Stroke Conference (ISC; 8–10 February, Dallas, USA).
“We believe these observations set the stage for using portable MRI in the dynamic environment of acute stroke intervention, where patients are at high risk for ongoing injury,” said Kevin Sheth (Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, USA), one of the study’s leading investigators.
In this study, conducted between December 2021 and August 2022 at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, USA, researchers performed bedside portable MRI exams in a standard, non-magnetically shielded interventional radiology suite following mechanical thrombectomy procedures, with clinical and research staff present.
They found that ultra-low-field portable MRI can facilitate a post-treatment baseline for post-thrombectomy stroke patients to evaluate the impact of potential changes in blood pressure and heart rate that may impact ongoing brain injury.
According to the company, these findings are significant because brain imaging is not routinely available, particularly with conventional MRI, following mechanical thrombectomy. The lack of post-mechanical thrombectomy imaging can preclude accurate infarction assessment, Hyperfine also notes in a press release.
“The data presented at ISC by the Yale team demonstrate that the Swoop system delivers diagnostic images and fills a critical gap where traditional imaging methods are unavailable,” said Hyperfine president and CEO Maria Sainz. “We are excited about the work we are doing to capture the stroke opportunity with the Swoop system and even more encouraged given the progress we have made on image quality since the Yale data were collected.”
