Aspect Imaging Announces Incorporation of inviCRO VivoQuant™ Image Analysis and Quantification Software into its M2™ Pre-clinical MRI Platform

Software Suite Provides (Extensive) Toolkit for Quantification and Post-Processing on Aspect's M2™ Compact MRI System for Pre-clinical Imaging

TORONTO, Canada, SHOHAM, Israel, and BOSTON, MA, Sept. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ - Aspect Imaging, the leader in high-performance permanent magnet systems for pre-clinical research, today announced its agreement with inviCRO to distribute the VivoQuant™ software suite for pre-clinical MRI image analysis and quantification with Aspect's pre-clinical MRI platform. VivoQuant software is a market-leading suite of software tools for the post-processing, analysis and quantification of in vivo PET, CT and SPECT imaging data with hundreds of users in academic and pharmaceutical imaging labs worldwide. With its new relationship with Aspect Imaging, additional functionality has been added to the already comprehensive toolkit so that inviCRO's VivoQuant can now be used with Aspect's M2™ compact high-performance MRI system.

The VivoQuant analysis software complements the strong toolkit available on Aspect Imaging's novel MRI platform - - M2™ - - which greatly simplifies the use and cost of MRI. As the system has virtually no magnetic fringe field and does not require the cost of dedicated facilities or expert personnel associated with operating traditional MRI systems, the M2 provides a significant advantage in terms of affordability, ease of operation and flexibility of installation. With the addition of the VivoQuant software, MRI data generated by the M2 system can be easily imported into the inviCRO platform for detailed analysis, quantification, comparison and then exported or archived in a wide variety of formats. In addition, VivoQuant software has extensive capabilities to facilitate multi-modality co-registration and quantification that will allow multi-modality fusion of the M2 MRI datasets with optical, PET, SPECT, and CT data.

"Our new relationship with inviCRO allows our pre-clinical customers to significantly enhance the post-processing and analysis of the valuable data generated from their M2 imaging systems," says Uri Rapoport, Aspect Imaging's Founder and CEO. "Our goal is to provide tools to allow academic and pharmaceutical scientists to use our M2 imaging system to quickly and quantitatively answer a broad range of biological questions in vivo. The addition of the inviCRO software to our workflow allows us to offer an even more comprehensive solution to our customers".

"The VivoQuant is a well-established platform for post-processing in pre-clinical PET, CT and SPECT and we are thrilled to be working with Aspect Imaging to provide this analytic capability to the pre-clinical MRI market", says Jack Hoppin, Co-founder and Managing Partner of inviCRO. "The in vivo imaging researcher requires image processing software flexible enough to cover a broad spectrum of applications and powerful enough to deliver insight within such applications. MRI is an important segment of the pre-clinical market and with Aspect Imaging, we believe that the VivoQuant platform can quickly become a standard by which MRI images are processed and co-registered in conjunction with other modalities".

VivoQuant software for use with Aspect's pre-clinical MRI systems will be distributed through Aspect Imaging and optimized for use on Aspect's M2 compact MRI system. The software will be launched and demonstrated at the World Molecular Imaging Congress 2011 in San Diego, September 7 - 10, 2011. See a demonstration at inviCRO's booth #417 and at Aspect Imaging's Booth #419.

About Aspect Imaging:

Aspect Imaging (www.aspectimaging.com) is the world's leader in high-performance compact MRI imaging systems for preclinical, clinical and advanced industrial applications. In preclinical research, Aspect's M2™ platform and suite of products enables academic researchers and pharmaceutical companies to harness the power and insights of MRI but without the cost, complexity and technical burden of traditional MRI systems. With Aspect's integrated and simple-to-use platform, researchers can derive deep insights into their biological questions quickly, easily and cost-effectively - - and all with the push of a button. As the system has no fringe magnetic field, the M2 can be placed anywhere in a working lab including at a scientist's benchtop. The M2™ platform is used by leading institutions for a broad range of in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro applications including high-resolution 3D anatomical, molecular, functional and multi-modality imaging. The Aspect high-performance MRI system is used to quantify the expression of disease, to monitor disease progression and to assess therapeutic efficacy and response.

About inviCRO

inviCRO (www.invicro.com) was founded with a mission of improving the value of imaging in drug discovery and development. inviCRO provides a full range of services and software solutions for pre-clinical imaging and novel translational work including contract research, custom data analysis, and software programs for image analysis, data management and high-throughput image processing. Their experienced team of scientists possesses unique capabilities in imaging physics, advanced biostatistics, multi-dimensional image processing, software development and an intimate understanding of imaging systems, agents and animal models. Managing and/or processing more than a dozen imaging studies per month across a broad range of applications, inviCRO has processed over 35,000 tomograms over the past three years. inviCRO's analysis and management software is used in over 70 imaging facilities worldwide and growing.

SOURCE Aspect Imaging