Posted 29 September 2021
The world’s first four-dimensional visual insight into the residual effects of COVID-19 or ‘long COVID’ providing an unprecedented ability for patients, clinicians and researchers to understand the ongoing impact of this disease has been obtained using 4DMedical’s unique XV Technology.
4DMedical confirmed that COVID-afflicted patients had been scanned as part of a comprehensive program of clinical pilot studies carried out in Melbourne, validating the application of this revolutionary technology in detecting and diagnosing various respiratory conditions, and providing safe longer-term monitoring and surveillance of the impact of diseases including COVID-19.
This XV Technology developed in Australia provides far greater insight into the residual physiological effects of COVID-19 than can be obtained using established imaging methods and lung function tests that may not detect evidence of this prevalent condition.
“Using XV Technology, physicians can detect areas of high and low ventilation with pinpoint accuracy across all parts of the lung, in all phases of the breath”, said Dr Ray Casciari, a pulmonary physician highly experienced in interpreting four-dimensional scans, based at the St Joseph Hospital in Orange, California.
“The resulting ventilation report provides clinicians with a colour-coded and dynamic visualisation of the patient’s lung, enhanced with four-dimensional animation,” Dr Casciari added. “This report is extremely clear and easily understood, and I can use this to inform my own analysis and to show the effect of COVID to the patient.”
“Until now, much of the attention to COVID has been around the epidemiology of its spread, and more recently regarding the effect of vaccines”, said Dr Andreas Fouras, Chief Executive Officer of 4DMedical. “Health authorities are increasingly focusing on how to assess, understand and manage the lingering effects of COVID upon people who have been afflicted with the condition.”
“Over 166 million people worldwide have endured and recovered from COVID”, added Dr Fouras. “The potential for 4DMedical’s XV Technology to play a role in surveillance of residual effects is unprecedented, along with our capacity to monitor the effectiveness of pharmaceutical and other interventions for the treatment of those residual effects of COVID. Patients and their doctors have never been able to see lungs with this level of richness and details before.”
‘Long COVID’ is a range of symptoms that can last weeks or months after infection and can impact people suffering mild or even asymptomatic reactions to the disease.
Experts continue to learn more about the short and long-term effects of COVID-19, who is impacted, and what form the residual effects take. This breakthrough in respiratory imaging enables research to progress faster, and for individual cases to be more closely monitored using breakthrough technology as part of treatment and wider clinical studies.
